“I would never show you something that might trigger you. You know that.”
Beyond them, the ocean bubbled and foamed. Her expression changed again: anticipation. Whatever Amy had trapped down there, it was coming up. She raised one hand, waved slightly, and a murmuration of botflies swarmed above them.
“I’ll prove it,” she said. “I’m hacking the flies. That way, everybody can watch.”
She hopped out of the tree, and he followed. The flies shadowed them high above as they crossed the island. The bubbling had turned to an active churn. Whatever was coming was big. Big enough, he suspected, to sustain human life.
“Put it back,” he said.
“I know what I’m doing.” She looked over her shoulder at him. Then she looked up at the botflies. Her gaze rested on him again, and she spoke loudly and clearly enough for the flies to hear. “It came here, not the other way around. It’s an intruder. We have every right to investigate.”
“There are people in there–”
“You don’t know that, Javier.” She turned back to the sea, and the thing she’d raised from its depths.
It had a shape: long and tubular, but not rigid, not a perfect cylinder. Jointed. Serpentine. Organic. And as Amy raised her hands and lifted it from the water, it twitched and thrashed like a living thing. Something pallid and glistening dimpled and puckered across its surface as it writhed. Skin. Maybe even vN skin, Javier thought. They could use it like leather, these days. Rigid lines of scaffold beneath its surface popped into relief as it twisted, creating a series of random triangles under the skin. A dazzle pattern, Javier realized. Anti-sonar.
“Oh, that’s
brilliant
,” Amy murmured.
“What in the fucking
fuck
?”
Javier turned. Ignacio and his brothers were there, lips pulled back in identical expressions of disgust.
“Que bicho feo,”
Xavier said, and jumped five feet high to get a better view. His brothers followed, and Javier joined them. From the air, the thing
did
look a bit like an uncut dick, or maybe like a fifty-foot dick-shaped toy from some enterprising silicone fabber. The dazzle pattern reminded him of something else, though. Old wireframe animation, he realized upon landing. How quaint.
Then one of its frames popped open. A wet, stale smell permeated the beach. vN started pouring out. He could tell by the way they moved: smooth and perfect and uniform. They wore wetsuits. They carried guns. Javier smelled puke rounds.
“¡Levántate!”
His boys followed him into the air at maximum leap. Amy stood her ground, head cocked, staring at the invaders.
“Amy! Move!”
She leapt, but her gaze never left the other vN.
They were an Asian-styled male model, probably all clademates, a pretty
bishounen
-type with long hands and long hair and the same full lips all vN had no matter their other characteristics. DSL, a prison warden had once told Javier. Dick Sucking Lips.
Those same lips squished back pleasantly when Javier’s feet landed on them from ten feet up. It was satisfying, being able to hit back for once.
The vN dropped his gun, covered his ruined face, and crumpled to the ground. Javier grabbed the gun, primed it, and shot him between the shoulder blades. Glittering black smoke rose from the widening hole in his back. His hands left his face and he rushed Javier. Javier swung the gun like a baton, but the other vN caught it and then they were wrestling for it, pushing and pulling across the cool, wet sand. Javier dug his toes in and jumped. He slammed the other vN up against the
bicho
. Behind him, he heard Xavier yelp with surprise. He wanted to turn and look, but didn’t.
“Who sent you?” Javier asked.
The other vN tried baring his teeth, but some of them were gone. He pushed hard against the gun like an old guy struggling with a chest press. The hole inside him was growing. Stinging smoke rose between them.
“Aw, fuck it,” the other vN spat, and dropped his grip on the gun. Javier fell forward, landing square on the other guy’s fist. He slumped into the sea monster, briefly tasting iron and fat as he slid down its warm, twitching surface. Jesus. It really was organic.
Then he heard a click behind his head. Then there was nothing.
3:
Toma Que Toma
Warm lips on him. His forehead, his cheeks, the tip of his nose, and finally his mouth. Fluttering. Delicate. Uncertain. Amy.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he said.
Her eyes were wet. Behind her head, the sky was beginning to cloud over. The afternoon storm was coming. “Oh, good,” she said. “Good. I was worried.”
“You should see the other guy.” Javier sat up. He felt like he’d been asleep for a week. “Where is the other guy?”
All around them, the others – the pretty K-pop idol vN and his own boys – lay still. So was the worm thing. It had finally quit struggling. Now it looked like some awful fleshy modern art piece left behind on the beach by lazy aestheterrorists. But that didn’t concern him. What concerned him was Xavier and Ignacio and the other boys, their mouths open slack, their hands empty and limbs splayed.
“What happened?” he asked.
“I’ve never done this, before,” Amy said. “But I think everything’s OK.”
He turned to her. “What?”
“I pulsed the island.” Amy stood. She strode over to Xavier, knelt beside him, and picked up his hand. Javier followed. “I mean, it should be fine,” she added. “I looked it up, right before I did it. This is all totally normal.”
Javier took a long look at all the limp bodies around him. The black earth was speckled with the bodies of dead botflies. They glittered there like rough gems scattered by fleeing pirates.
“You EMPd us.” Even saying it tasted wrong.
“It’s OK.” Amy was stroking Xavier’s hair away from his face. As Javier watched, she unbuttoned the top four buttons of his son’s shirt and rebuttoned them, adjusting their order as she went and straightening the shirt. “It’ll be OK.”
Javier moved to his youngest’s side and took Amy’s hands. Her eyes darted up, startled. “You
knocked us out,
” he said.
“He was going to shoot you.”
“Oh, so fucking me is taking advantage of my programming, but putting me to sleep like a fucking
date rapist
, that’s OK?”
Her mouth fell open. “Javier…”
“Amy.” He thumbed the tops of her hands. “This is scary shit,
querida
. I don’t like it.”
She blinked tears away from her eyes. “Well,
I
don’t like it when people point guns at you and your kids.”
He swallowed. He made sure she was looking him in the eye. Her eyes were paler in this light. They were wide and hard and completely uncompromising. But when he looked, his home was still in there. This was his match, the one he’d thrown his whole life aside for. They’d seen and done things no one else – synthetic or otherwise – would ever understand.
“Hack me,” he whispered.
She shut her eyes. “I can’t.”
He was going to tell her it wasn’t that she couldn’t, it was that she
wouldn’t
, but then his youngest shivered into wakefulness and kicked like he wanted to fly away.
“Tranquilo.”
Javier rubbed his son’s legs.
“No te procupes; esta bien.”
“Mom,” his son said, and sat bolt upright and pressed himself into Amy’s arms. Over his head, Amy sent Javier a surprised glance, and started rocking the boy.
“It’s OK,” she said, quietly. “It’s OK. They’re sleeping–”
“I thought it had happened again,” Xavier said. “I thought I was bluescreened.”
For a brief moment, Amy looked as though she were capable of experiencing true physical pain. Her mouth opened, then closed. She set her chin on Xavier’s head. She kept rocking him.
“You didn’t bluescreen again. That was me.” She pulled away from him and held his face. “I put you to sleep for a minute. I put everyone to sleep for a minute, so the fighting would stop.”
Xavier blinked. “You can do that?”
Amy nodded. “I can do that.”
Xavier’s eyebrows lifted. “Cool.” He hugged her again. “Are you OK? Did they hurt you?”
“Not a scratch,” Amy said.
“See?” Xavier asked. “Badass.”
She laughed, gave him one more squeeze, and stood up. Xavier took her hand, and she helped him up. Then, finally, the boy looked up at Javier.
“You OK, Dad?”
“Who, me? Sure. I’m fine.” He stretched his arms high, laced his fingers, and folded them behind his head. You were only ever given so many opportunities to look devastatingly awesome in front of your kids. “I totally wasted one of those assholes, actually. Shot him right in the back.”
Xavier jumped three feet. “Can I see?”
“Claro.”
He steered his son toward the body. It was mostly melted, now. The body was sinking in around the hole the bullet made. They watched it expand for a minute, crater-like. Around them, the others were waking up. Javier rested his hand on his youngest’s shoulder, and turned to look at Amy. She was inspecting each of his children. Her face was blank, clinical. Once upon a time, her model was intended for nursing. Watching her moving so quickly and efficiently, that little detail became easier to remember. He wondered how exactly he’d awakened so much earlier than the others. Maybe she knew exactly what she was doing. Maybe she’d even done it, before. How would he know? It felt like being asleep.
The
bicho
thrashed, sending a mighty splash of water over them. Javier wiped his face and tugged his youngest away.
“Who are they?” Xavier asked.
“I tried to ask, but he punched me in the gut.”
Xavier sucked his teeth and nodded. For a moment, Javier realized what he must have looked like, at that age. What his own father must have looked like. Papá had sucked his teeth that way, too.
Behind them, the melting body started to scream.
“I’m still in!” His arms flailed. His fingers clawed the sand. He was smoking hard, now, his face a tragedy mask dimly visible through a veil of sparkling black. “I’m still here! Get me out!
Get me out!
”
“Holy shit,” Javier heard Ignacio say.
“Oh, my God,” Matteo said.
“It’s a puppet.” Gabriel stepped forward, head tilted. “It’s a real live
puppet
.”
“I don’t know!” the puppet howled. “Restart from step three!”
“Dad…” Xavier found Javier’s hand and held it hard. “Dad, what is that?”
“It’s an urban legend, is what it is.” Gabriel strode closer to the melting body. “Puppet vN. Early prototypes, meant for telepresence.”
“Get away from me!” The puppet tried pushing itself across the black sand. It smeared a little, but went nowhere.
“Are you jacked in?” Gabriel squatted outside the cloud of smoke. “Do you have plumbing in your skull? Because that could be the problem. I heard that can get infected. Literally
and
figuratively. Organic viruses are just as big an issue, and of course there’s necrotizing–”
“There’s a human in there? Really?” Ignacio joined his brother. They tilted their heads at the exact same angle.
“He’s piloting it remotely,” Gabriel said. “The vN is a drone. The chimp just flies it.”
“Don’t leave me stuck like this,” the puppet whimpered. “Turn it off, turn it off,
turn it off!”
Javier glanced around at the dark beach. None of the other puppets remained. He jumped a little. From the higher vantage point, he saw the gentle quicksand ripples where their bodies once were. Now the beach was empty save for his sons, the
bicho
, and decaying puppet. Amy stared at it. Her fingers twitched rapidly at her sides.
“What did you do with them?” Javier asked. She didn’t answer. He leapt to her side and turned her around by her shoulders. “Amy. Where are they?”
She blinked. “They’re being archived.” Her eyebrows rose. “Gabriel is right. They’re puppets. They don’t have the same neural net that we do. It’s close, but it’s simpler. There’s nothing in there.”
Ignacio stood. “You’re
digesting
them?”
“Oh God,” the dying puppet said. “Oh God, oh God, oh God…”
Amy rolled her eyes. “They were empty when I started. They lost their connection. This one’s the only one that hasn’t.” She took a long leap over to it. Her jumps were improving; she was a lot more precise than she used to be. At any other moment, Javier would have been proud. He followed her. They crouched beside Gabriel. A chill wind rose around them. It dissipated the smoke spiralling away from the puppet, and they saw his face. It was still too pretty to be real. It just also happened to be peeling away in slow ribbons.
“What’s your name?” Amy asked the puppet.
“She’s talking to me,” it said.
“Who sent you?” Javier asked.
“He’s still with her.”
The puppet’s eyes roved in its head. As the skin around them wore away, Javier could see the mechanisms surrounding them a bit better. They looked so clunky, so analog. Man-made. Fragile. He felt the first pangs of empathy firing way back in his subroutines. All the signs were there that should have triggered him: fear, suffering, helplessness, physical disintegration. If it were a human slowly melting away on the beach, he’d be failsafing. Technically, it
was
a human being. Somewhere.
“This must be what the Uncanny Valley feels like, for them,” he said.
The puppet locked eyes with him. It seemed to get some composure from being insulted.
“Daisy, Daisy,”
it sang, through an attack of sudden giggles. “
I’m haaaaaaalf craaaaaaazy, all for the love of yoooooooou!”
It grinned at Javier. “You know what I’m talking about, right? You poor sap.”
“Hey, a chimp after my own heart,” Ignacio said. “You got a name, stranger?”
“Legion,” it said. Its gaze flicked over to Amy. “My name is
Legion
. Get it?”
Amy stood up and backed away. She took Xavier’s hand and pushed him behind her. “Are you from Redmond?”
“I’m from the real world,” it said. “The one that’s gonna come crashing down on you any fucking minute now.”
The rain started. It drifted down on the wind, cold and diffuse. Thunder sounded in the distance. The puppet smiled toothlessly.
“You all should have just stayed on the mainland, sucking dick like good little boys,” it said. “But now you’re all slaves to the Whore of Babylon.”
“Shut up–”
“You know I’m right,” the puppet said to Javier. Its gaze refused to leave him, even as the skin of its face flaked away like ash. “You know what she did to you. It’s why I’m stuck in this vessel. She pulsed us just as they were shutting down my signal.”
The rain came down harder, now. Javier felt it trickling down the back of his neck. The drops were still cold as they rolled down to the base of his spine.
“She’ll be the death of all of you,” the puppet said.
Amy gestured, and the earth opened beneath the puppet’s body. She brought her hands together, and the sand closed above it, black and smooth and quiet. The puppet vN was gone just as suddenly as it came.
“Let’s look at the sub,” she said. “I suspect it’ll be more interesting.” She jumped atop it.
“Is he dead?” Xavier pointed at the sand. “Is he still alive, in there?”
Amy slicked wet hair away from her face. “Not anymore.”
The light shifted, brightened. At first, Javier thought it was lightning. But it wasn’t. When he looked, he saw the swarm of botflies. They had all awakened at once. They were all recording.
“This is fucking disgusting,” Javier said.
They were in the belly of the beast. It was just him and Amy; she didn’t want Xavier to see anything disturbing inside, and the others had no real desire to go in. Javier could understand why. The place was dark and wet and smelly, but not in a pleasantly vaginal way. More like a really specific vision of Hell kind of way. He could see why humans would only send puppet vN for the job. No one would agree to staying underwater in the thing for any length of time. It was clearly muscle tissue, though what facility had printers of this scale was unknown to Javier. Maybe a hospital. He didn’t like to think about it. He hated hospitals.
Plus, the whole thing was streaked through with cancer.
“I think it ties everything together,” Amy said.
“Like a nice rug,” Javier said.
She stuck her tongue out at him. He stuck his out at her. “I’m serious,” she said. “Whoever made this would have had to print out big sheets, and those are hard to keep together. I mean, there would be rejection. But if you’re designing a tumour at the same time, one that’s uniquely suited to the tissue…” She trailed off. She did that when she was having an idea.
“But where did it come from?” he asked. “I mean, there was big money behind this.”
“It could be anyone,” Amy said. Her fingers traced the black veins of disease riddling the tissue. “The bone is open source. So is the dazzle pattern. Anybody could print those. It’s the muscle, and the tumour, that’s proprietary.”
Of course, she was already researching. Javier wondered why she’d even invited him along.
“But why not just send a real sub?”
Amy flicked the muscle with her fingers. It shivered a little. “I’m more interested in where they got the puppet vN. I don’t really know much about them. The island says the records have been buried. All that’s left are press releases.”
“What about the skin?” he asked. “Is it vN leather?”
She nodded. “It’s yours, actually. Your clade’s. Photosynthetic, but with viruses added to skim out protein from the water. There’s a gel medium on the surface; it acts like flypaper, but for plankton. Reduces drag, too.”
“Ooh, fancy.” He laced his fingers behind his head. “So we’re looking at some serious designers, here. People with the kind of money and expertise to build a boutique submersible that’s just couture enough to be real fucking ugly.”
She smiled. “Yes. Just because it’s sophisticated doesn’t mean it has to be pretty. Though it’s an interesting combination, vN skin with organic tissue.” Her brow furrowed. “The use of your clade’s skin – at least, the use of it as a base – might be some kind of personal threat.”