vN (30 page)

  When their feet hit the floor, the room began to glow. Light emanated from a large square table embedded in the floor and surrounded by cushions. It exposed a wall of windows viewing the lake (Amy couldn't remember which lake it was, exactly; the whole city seemed half-sunken), and a spotless kitchen. An empty rectangle gaped where a refrigerator would have stood.

  "No humans live here," Amy said.

  "Correct." The house spoke in the same voice as the car – the same voice as Atsuko. It was getting a little strange, how often that model kept popping up in her life. This version sounded younger and cuter, though. More like Rei and Yui, the networked models she'd met at the Sheep. "This house was originally occupied by an organic man with a congenital hearing problem. Thus all the affordances. But then he received an implant. He donated this place for our purposes!"

  Amy frowned. "Are you Rory?"

  "That's me!" A giggle echoed through the empty house. "I'm so glad to finally meet you, Amy. And I'm very proud to give you a place of refuge after all you've been through."

  "Thank you. It's very thoughtful of you." Amy peered around the room. "Is there a camera or a surface that I should be talking to? I don't want to be rude."

  "Oh, don't worry about that. Please just make yourself at home. There's no refrigerator, but there is a pantry full of vN food. It's all packaged, too, so you don't have to worry. Dr Sarton told me how careful you need to be about that."

  "That's… great."

  "There's also a change of clothes, if you would like. That gaming suit can't be too comfortable after two dips in Elliott Bay!"

  Hearing Rory's real voice reminded Amy of what it was like to read her weekly diet plans, when she was still little. Each of Rory's ro-bento pings maintained this same level of cheeriness and delight, as though starving yourself was just the most fun thing in the world and you should be happy to do it for your parents. As though you should enjoy feeling so hungry and hollow all the time. Back then, she found it annoying. Now, she found it inexplicably creepy.

  "Your iterations are on their way, Javier," Rory continued. "I thought you might like to spend some more time with them, in a nicer place than that drafty old warehouse."

  Javier's brows furrowed. "You really know a lot about us, huh?"

  "Oh, yes. I'm quite the little know-it-all."

  The low table in front of them lit up and displayed a diagram of the house. Amy couldn't help but stare: the architect had added old-fashioned elements like braziers sunk deep in the floor and sliding walls that made the whole home internally modular. With the exception of the bathrooms, the building could be arranged to fit almost any usage pattern.

  "You should try the soaking tub," Rory said. "It's geo-thermal. Like an
onsen
."

  The Japaneseness of the house instantly made sense. Rory was selling her on something: Mecha. She was, in a very roundabout way, trying to prove to Amy how great a foreign place could be. But Amy hadn't needed convincing on that score. It wasn't leaving her country behind that frightened her. It was leaving behind the people still living there.

  "Look, I know you want me to go to Mecha, but what I really want is to call–"

  "It's a wonderful place!" The table's light dappled into a map of the city. "Just look at it!" The map on the table magnified five times, and suddenly the street unfolded before them. Food stalls with grey blobs of vN dumplings on sticks loomed large on the table. Bottles of electrolytes sweated condensation in the hands of smiling synthetics. Humans laughed. Common video popped up: the Mecha Matsuri, marshalled by the stars of
Project Aiko
and the other shows on the dorama feed.

  "They've made room for us there," Javier said. "Not just room, but a whole environment."

  "You told me it was a zoo," Amy said.

  "You can watch every channel there!" Rory said. "And every movie in every theatre, and play all the games. They're all safe for vN."

  Rory showed them happy scenes of cheering vN in gaming parlours, dancing and waving their arms under projected light, the configuration of which changed with each movement so that their hand motions remixed the visible environment from supernovas to English countryside and dairy cattle. Then the view flipped over to a girl carrying a white lace parasol. The stats on it appeared as soon as the camera zoomed over: where the plastic came from, how many computer shells it was made from, and so on. Then their view merged with the parasol and suddenly they were in it, watching the street click by in brief but regular still shots.

  "They really love you!" Rory added. "Check out these games!"

  Rory showed them four different Mechanese gaming channels. Various game skins of Amy and Javier battled orcs and giant spiders and demons summoned from other dimensions. Whole armies of Amy and Javier formed. Then they attacked each other. They built fortresses and teleport stations and liberated small villages. One channel showed them having sex. It was in-game sex, though, so it was all fuzzed out and surrounded by twinkling pink lights so the other players couldn't see anything unless they had a special membership.

  "These look handmade." Amy knew for a fact that her chest couldn't possibly be that big.

  "You should see the porn!" Rory brought them an image of a very real-looking Javier bent over a human woman in a nurse's costume. The more Amy looked at the man, the more he seemed exactly like Javier, down to the creases on his hands and the set of his teeth and the glow coming off his skin. But it also
wasn't
him: the eyes were too bright, the smile too sweet. It was him, but it wasn't.

  
You know what that means, don't you?

  Amy did. "Turn it off."

  "But–"

  "That's his
son
, Rory. Turn it off. Now."

  The table winked out. The room seemed dull and dim without its light. Amy was glad of the sudden shadow. Beside her, Javier continued staring at the table as though its images were still playing. Abruptly, he stood.

  "I think I'll give that soaking tub a try, after all," he said, and left the room.

 
 

 
 

Amy wandered. She liked the house. It was the kind of built environment she would have obsessed over, once, mapping it and rendering it and redesigning it a hundred different ways. A distant and objective part of her enjoyed running her fingers over its surfaces: reclaimed wood, soapstone, privacy paper screens whose permeability altered under heat. The space's best feature was the way it could be altered so easily, how the barriers meant nothing if you were patient and willing to rearrange them. She had modified places like this in Edo period games, when she played Nobunaga or Ieyasu or someone else with a castle to keep. She recognized the layouts.

  She closed every wall behind her as she moved ever deeper into the house. Then she slid each one along their respective rails until each seam was in an entirely different location, first on the left and then the right, alternating. She made herself another room, a tiny one with a low table and two matching chairs, and a scroll-style display hanging from the wall. As she entered, it glowed to life and gave her images of old temples and ornate castle towers whose curlicued dragons now breathed moss. Then she closed the wall until no light sliced through its seams.

  Closing the doors behind her did nothing to hide her from the house, however. "You seem upset, Amy."

  "I
am
upset, Rory." She tried finding a camera to speak to, but couldn't.

  "Why?" Rory sounded genuinely puzzled "You've been saved. You'll never have to return to Redmond ever again, and you'll get to start a new life in a really fun city!"

  Amy rested her arms on the table, and her head on her arms. Her hair still smelled like Elliott Bay. She'd have wanted to wash it, if she could be persuaded to care. She couldn't believe there was actually a time when she resisted wearing clothes chosen from the trash. It seemed so trivial, now. Her mother was dead. Her dad was in a jail cell somewhere. And no matter how far away from this place Amy got, she would still be stuck with Portia.

  "I feel like I'm trading one cage for another."

  "You could always try to make it on your own, Amy." On the wall, the scroll showed her images of vN sitting behind an electrified fence at a temporary prison. They wore green jumpsuits and they looked patient, even content. Like they expected to happily reunite with their humans once this whole thing blew over. "I'm sure you'd do just fine, at least for a little while."

  A knock sounded on the door. It slid aside, and Javier poked his head through. He was wearing a thin cotton bathrobe and a pair of slippers. "Hey."

  "Hey yourself."

  He pushed the door the rest of the way, and entered. "Nice room."

  Amy looked at the scroll. "Rory, could Javier and I talk in private? We have a lot to go over."

  "Of course! I'm way behind on my menu planning; please just ping if you need anything."

  Javier frowned at the ceiling, then sat down across from her at the table. He reached across it and plucked something free from her hair: a piece of seaweed. He twisted it between thumb and forefinger until she took hold of it.

  "Are you trying to tell me something?"

  "The soaking tub is very nice. It has a wide variety of shampoos on tap."

  The volume of her sudden, surprised laughter made the room seem smaller and more intimate. She grabbed for Javier's hand, gripping hard. She squeezed, and he squeezed. She looked up and he was looking at her, too, and it was like kissing – or perhaps the moment just before kissing, or maybe a long time after.

  "Let me find that zipper."

  Amy blinked. She withdrew her hand and folded her arms. She felt a line form between her brows.

  Javier threw his hands in the air. "Fine! Do it by yourself. I just thought it might be tricky to get out of."

  
I'm sure that's what he tells all the girls.

  "Oh." Amy tapped a button on her wrist. Instantly, the suit went slack on her skin. It fell down one shoulder and she hastened to pull it back up. "See? It's smart fabric, that's all. No snaps, no zippers."

  She made to tighten the suit back up again, but Javier reached for her shoulder. Gently, he pulled the fabric aside. "Jesus."

  "What?" She tried to look. "What is it?"

  "The compression on that suit was probably the only thing keeping you together," he said. "I can see where your skin stretched out, when your aunts tried to tear you apart. Right here." He ran one delicate finger over her skin. "Christ. I'm sorry."

  "For what? You're the one who got dragged in there because of me. I'm the one who should be apologizing."

  Javier pulled away. He studied her very closely for a moment, then said: "I think you don't know how bad I've had it, before. Believe it or not, doing interviews with corporate deskjockeys isn't that hard. It's a hell of a lot easier than breaking out of some rathole of a real prison."

  "But Junior–"

  "Junior will be fine. My boys are strong. I think they've proved that."

  "Portia–"

  "I'm not on this road with Portia." His head tilted. "When I look at you, I see only you. I don't see her. I know she's in there, but I know she's separate. Like a toxin." Javier pulled the drape of her suit back into place, covering her bare skin. "You drank up all the poison so your mom wouldn't have to. And you've been carrying that poison inside you ever since. But that doesn't make you poisonous yourself."

  
You know, when he says it like that, I almost believe him.

  Amy shut her eyes. "I have to go."

 

In the bath, she looked at more maps of Mecha. There was a tourism board video, and a succession of photos and films scraped from common feeds, and they all looped over the dark granite tub as Amy scrubbed. She had not had a chance to clean herself up in a long time, and the accumulated grime seemed to have developed a special affection for her skin. No matter how hard she scraped, even when she used her fingernails, it didn't quite come off. And even then, it hid under her nails: the dust of the ruined city and the oil from the bay in greasy grey half-moons that she had to pick out as thoroughly as possible.

  
When your mother was a little girl, we waited for storms. We ran outside, naked, and danced in the rain.

  And then Portia showed it to her: a little girl's body made ghostly by lightning, laughing open-mouthed, her tongue out to catch raindrops.

  
This is my favourite image of your mother. My baby, wild and free. She should have always stayed that way.

  Amy covered her eyes. It did nothing to shut out the image. She dug her the heels of her hands in to her eye sockets.

  
I miss her, too.

  "Don't make me share this with you," Amy whispered. "I don't want to share anything with you, ever again."

  
She'd be alive now, if she hadn't run away to iterate you.

  Amy punched the wall of the tub, hard. It didn't hurt, but the thrumming vibration of force that coursed up her arm silenced Portia for a moment. When she opened her eyes, there was a crack in the tile flooring. The water gurgled there noisily, its flow interrupted by this new interruption in the otherwise smooth surface. Amy watched her knuckles slowly heal themselves. The light from the Mechanese feeds glistened on her wet and smoking skin.

  "I'm going to get rid of you, Portia."

  She looked up at the display. There was an infomercial about the specialized vN clinics all over Mecha, for mixed couples and families. You could get prescription food there, to help heal wounds faster. There was a little vN boy who had detached his retina while playing baseball with some human kids. He smiled happily for the camera, then pulled his lower lid down and stuck his tongue out. All better.