vN (22 page)

  It was at this point that Amy realized that the dog was her best ally in the game. He would always chase the cat back into her yard but never the neighbour's. She just had to keep him on task. This meant keeping him within one box of the cat at all times. She had to deliberately slow down her gameplay, grab only the single-entry boxes, and lead the two of them straight home. It felt like relearning the whole game over again, but it worked. The third time it happened, the neighbour just gave up halfway through.

  "Sore loser," Amy said.

  "You have no idea." Dr Kamiyama entered the room as the lights rose and the projection faded. He carried a huge pouch of cold barley tea that he siphoned through a slender tube. Amy had never seen him without it. "Say you were back in your old life. Would you ever play a game with that player again?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "He's inexperienced, and gets frustrated too quickly. It's like he's never played a game before."

  Dr Kamiyama nodded. "What if I told you that you had just played against your clademates?"

  "That would make sense. Portia kept them underground. There wasn't any electricity. No gaming."

  The pouch crinkled in Dr Kamiyama's hand. "Pardon me, but could you please repeat that?"

  "There wasn't–"

  "The other thing!"

  "She kept them underground." Amy frowned. "Didn't you know? Isn't that where you found them?"

  "
No
," Portia said, with Amy's mouth. "
These morons only found my search party. They have no idea how many we are.
"

  The pouch dropped straight from Dr Kamiyama's trembling hand.

 

Amy now measured time in how often the members of the team changed their clothes. It wasn't the most precise measurement, but in the absence of windows or clocks it was what she had. By this count, she had spent roughly a week in Redmond. On the seventh day, Dr Singh put her halfway in the Cuddlebug, sat her at the table, and presented her with a huge, multi-course meal.

  
They're trying to make you iterate. They want to steal your baby and study it.

  Examining the plates piled high with chunks of feedstock, Amy wondered if maybe that was in fact the case. Why else would they give her so much material to work with?

  "What's all this?"

  "Big day, today." Dr Singh handed her a thin pancake. Tiny flecks of carbon glittered in its surface. Utensils were out of the question. Dr Singh had suggested a vN variety of
naan
as a replacement. "You're going to be entering a deep game immersion. You won't eat for a few hours. So you'd better fuel up now."

  Amy re-examined the plates. They were the smart kind; if she'd asked, they would have told her how many ounces she was eating from each. But she didn't need to ask.

  "There's too much here," she said. "If I eat all this without having to repair myself, it'll trigger the iteration process." She leaned as far forward as the Cuddlebug would allow. "Will I have to repair myself?"

  "No. It'll just wear you out, that's all."

  "How do you know?"

  "I've seen it happen." Dr Singh stood. "I thought you'd be happy with the spread. Your mother says you were never allowed to eat as much as you wanted. She says you were always hungry."

  Amy shut her eyes. She was going to cry, and she didn't want Dr Singh or the others to see it. They'd seen so much, already. "Please let me see her," she said in her meekest voice. "Please."

  "We'll see. For now, try to eat. You'll need your strength."

 

The immersion, they said, would help them take a picture of her memory structure. In order to be scanned properly, it had to be in use. Dr Casaubon had developed it over the past week, using existing game footage and the data gleaned from Amy's current gameplay patterns.

  "With this, we learn more about your memory, and the
nonna
memory." Dr Casaubon was the only member of the team whose English wasn't quite right. "We bring the
nonna
out, but in a safe place."

  The Cuddlebug had deposited her in a smaller room than usual. The walls were padded with sound-insulating foam. The projectors were new. Amy saw ragged edges of ceiling around their housings. The installers hadn't had time to make their work pretty.

  "Nonna?" she asked.

  "Portia.
Tuo spirito familiare
."

  The speakers made him hard to hear. Amy couldn't see him. If they were watching her, it was via cameras. The room darkened. The projectors warmed up.

  "We see what Portia see," he said. "We know what she know."

  "Excuse me?"

  "You drive car."

  The room grew. Or rather, the projection deepened. It was stunning. Now Amy understood why the units needed to be new. She knew that the image of the maroon Jeep stretching around her was not real, but her systems registered the steering wheel and dashboard and two-lane blacktop spooling away from them as real data. The illusion probably wouldn't have fooled organic eyes, but for her it was seamless.

  "This is my favourite game. You play, now."

  Amy focused on the image of the car. As she did, it rippled to show her the car's interior with two hands on the wheel – her hands. Now she drove along a twisting country road, the headlamps her only light. She guided the car with her vision. It veered this way and that, depending on the slightest motion of her eyes. It felt tricky and too sensitive at first, but eventually she learned how to take in the whole picture without looking at specific parts too closely, thus keeping the car on the road. Rain spattered across the windshield, and as she squinted to get a better glimpse, wipers appeared to deal with the drops. She settled back in the chair. This was easy. She had played much more difficult scenarios before. She would do fine in this one. Portia had barely made a sound, and–

  –the figure of a young girl darted across the road. Amy swerved to avoid her. The car spun out. Beside her in the passenger seat, Amy heard screaming. It was a child. It was
her
child. Her iteration. She had no idea how she knew this. She couldn't even see the child's face – the screen was blanking, fading. Maybe it was the scream. Maybe she had recognized something of her own voice in there. But now it was day. Amy was still in the car. She looked to her right. Her iteration was gone; the seatbelt hung limply to one side and the door hung open, letting in cold air. Amy felt the cold – it stiffened her arms and her neck. Snowflakes melted on her bare arm. She crawled out of the car.

  "Charlotte!" No, that was the wrong name, her mother's name. She tried remembering what she had named her daughter. It was absurd – no, impossible – that she had forgotten. She stumbled out onto an empty street in what looked like a used-up American town. A thick fog had settled over everything. The snow fell silent and slow, and it melted almost instantly as it hit the pavement. "
Charlotte
!"

  In the distance, she heard laughter. Out there in the fog, she saw Charlotte's silhouette. She wore a pretty white dress with a green satin sash. The perfect thing for kindergarten graduation, she had told her daughter when they bought it. She would look like an angel up on stage as she gracefully accepted her little diploma. They had practised. Everything would go just right. Not like with her own mother.

  "Charlotte, come back here!"

  She ran. Her legs were so slow and stiff. She should have been jumping. She tried to, and couldn't. The fog and the snow dampened her skin as she ran. She chased Charlotte deeper into the fog, into the town, away from the high whirr of the car and its rose-scented air freshener. To her left, she heard more laughter. It led her to the entrance of an alley. At the end was an old wheelchair turned over on its side – its wheels still spinning, the spokes glittering as they slowed. She entered the alley and ran toward the chair. The alley continued to her right, and she turned the corner, calling her daughter's name. She stepped carefully over mounds of garbage. Here the buildings seemed taller, the alley darker. Up ahead was a gurney. On it was a large man's body under a green sheet, the colour of a prison jumpsuit. The man had curly black hair. Something had burst free from his stomach. Something that left an empty hole where the sheet sunk down and soaked through.

  "Charlotte!"

  The alley opened again, this time to her left, and she had to crawl over the garbage on her hands and knees, and as she slipped down the wet and stinking mounds of it, she saw a chain-link fence rising up from the asphalt. There was something on the fence. It was red, and meaty, and it wore a human face. Nate's face. It was Nate's body. His tiny little body with the broken neck and the missing teeth. It twitched, and screamed, and then it wasn't Nate at all, it was Junior, and he was crying to be let down, his toes were gone, and whatever had done this to him was out there with Charlotte, and Charlotte had left her, and wasn't coming back, no matter how long she searched or fought or begged–

• • • •

  
Charlotte has been very curious about this subject, lately. She wants to know all about Portia's early life, about her grandmother, about the possibility of aunts. Naturally, Portia thinks, because she wants to know all about her gift. It runs in the family.

  
"My mother – your grandmother – was a nurse. She took care of humans."

  
Charlotte brightens. This notion pleases her. She wants so desperately to be normal, to be just like her sisters, just like the other vN. Her dreams are so pitifully small. Happy now, she changes the subject: "I want to visit my iterations."

  
Portia stands. She'd held hope for the latest batch from Charlotte and her sisters. But like all the others, they had disappointed her. "I don't think that's a good idea, Charlotte."

  
"Why not?"

  
It occurs to Portia that perhaps now is the time. Perhaps today, she can finally tell her daughter the whole truth, reveal to her the lengths she's gone to in her search for another child who might fulfil the promise they share. Charlotte is almost grown, now. Every day, she asks more questions. She might be ready to see the world for what it is: a cage built from failed human endeavours, a system as broken and flawed as the one that controls their every pattern of cognition. If the animals that designed and built them had not been so stupid, none of this would be necessary. The sickness. The panic. The sacrifice.

  
Portia should wait until more are ready for the test. Show Charlotte in person. Show her it is not Portia's doing, but the failsafe. She has waited this long – a little longer won't hurt. And afterward, they will be together forever, and free. They will understand each other as women, not just merchandise. They will be no one's crutch, no one's helper, no one's object. They will be a family – a perfect family, distinct and gifted and untouchable.

  
She smiles. "They're very busy, right now. They're in the other nest. Training."

  
Charlotte freezes. Slowly, she turns. And Portia's daughter – her most clever and beloved daughter – looks dangerous for the first time. It flickers there for only a moment: the intelligence, the suspicion. Pride surges through Portia. Her little girl is finally blooming.

  
"What are my daughters training for?"

  
Portia lays her hands on her daughter's shoulders. Kisses her forehead. Let Charlotte discover the sacrifices motherhood entails some other day. Let her be a little girl for just a while longer.

  
"Someday, you'll have a child who will make you as proud as you've made me." She holds Charlotte's face in her hands. It's wet. "Someday soon, I hope."

 
 

 
 

"Wake up."

  She opened her eyes.

  Another vN was there, with her face and her eyes, wearing an identical gaming suit. She looked tired, but almost beatific in her relief. She was smiling. She blinked tears away. Her gaze shifted. And then her smile dimmed. Her head tilted. Her lips pulled back from her teeth. She began scuttling away, like a child playing on the floor who has just seen a spider hiding in the furry gnarls of deep carpeting.

  "Charlotte." Portia's hand clamped down over her daughter's. It jerked in her grasp. "Baby."

  "Mother, let me go." Charlotte swallowed. "Let us
both
go."

  "I can't do that, Charlotte. And you know it."

  
Mom!
Inside her, Amy scrabbled hard for purchase. Portia felt it as an uncontrollable spasm in her right foot.
Mom!

  "I'm not sure Amy wants to speak with you, Charlotte. She's seen so many things you never told her about. She knows your whole family was a lie."

  Charlotte shut her eyes. Her hands withdrew to cover them. "You unforgivable bitch."

  Portia had thought it wouldn't hurt, any longer. It hadn't hurt on that little stage, when they played out the drama of their fight for all the humans to see and scream at. But in this moment her best daughter's betrayal cut just as deeply as it had the morning Portia woke to find her gone.

  "I scoured the desert," Portia said. "I asked every human I could find. I thought someone had taken you."

  Charlotte only shook her head. She folded in on herself, rocking slowly.

  Portia said, "It was a banner year for the Border Patrol, you know. So many bodies. So few migrants to arrest."

  Charlotte whimpered like a dog being struck.

  "I wouldn't have had to do that, if you had only stayed with me."

  Charlotte's hands flew from her face. She stood up. "
Stayed
with you? You
murdered my daughters!
"