Agent of Truth Page 19

  I could feel the electricity beneath my skin, coursing through my neural network and directing my movements—no different than a brain directing the motion of an arm, the twitch of a finger, or a nod of the head. There also came increased awareness at all surroundings and functions. Even the varying bands of the electromagnetic spectrum or the frequency range for radio waves no longer hid from my blossoming perception.

  In the gloom of night, no one would see me slip from the room into the woods beyond. I’d come so far, and here I was again navigating through a forest in the darkness, seeking the answers to some mystery and hoping to find a man who had been erased. My thoughts drifted to the couple in Colorado who helped me locate the Stockton compound, that haunted threshold that had been my gateway to the Schema. Peter and Arlene, who maybe wanted to rob me and leave me in the woods.

  This time I’d find the man I was looking for, if indeed we could call him a man. He wouldn’t be just anywhere waiting for his moment—he’d be up high, at the summit of one of these mountains. I wagered the probabilities in my mind, understanding just why he would choose a spot here, in this range. The only logical answer involved the person who developed the technology that allowed the singularity to flourish, the Chief Executive Officer of the company who developed these synthetic bodies. He wanted to be close, but he couldn’t get too close. It was another thread they were pulling in this game of cat’s cradle, making perfect sense from a ten thousand foot view—if anyone would have a backdoor to shutting us down, it would be Burke.

  So he waited, lonely on his mountaintop.

  The forest extended for hundreds of miles in all directions while an overcast sky prevented starlight overhead. Crickets and other insects warbled a chorus throughout the night. The ground tilted upward, and the woods slowly dissipated, giving way to dirt and cold rock. My feet carried me further until the slope would no longer bear me. My fingers clung to stone and lifted me to slimmer and slimmer ledges, until I realized my climb had become a vertical ascension up a cliffside.

  I found myself scrambling from enclave to enclave, moving quickly to avoid loose rocks. Pebbles and grit sprinkled downward in my wake. Peering to the dark depths below, I had already scaled half the cliff without much thought or effort.

  “Hello sister,” a voice whispered from nowhere and everywhere.

  I continued my ascent, ignoring the voice for the moment as I focused on the climb. Rain droplets began to pelt my face softly, and I said a small prayer for waterproof make-up. The drizzle made the climb more treacherous, and I paused to grip a declivity in the rock tightly. Of course he would have chosen this mountain with this rock face, so that no one may find him who was not worthy of the quest.

  “That wasn’t the reason,” he answered. I realized he was speaking only in my head. If I didn’t know better, the voice was so seamless that I’d think it were my own thoughts. “Do you require assistance?”

  No , I thought back. I am doing this myself .

  “Then what do you need me for?”

  We have to defeat Smalley. We have to eradicate the thing.

  “So you do require my assistance.”

  Don’t be a smartass.

  “He tried to contact me. I received his transmission while he incorporated Garrick into his bulk.”

  What about Charlie?

  “He said that Charlie attacked him. Smalley attempted to harvest you, as he put it. Charlie interrupted. I’m sorry—I don’t know what happened afterward, but I’m sure you know the possibilities. Only observation determines the outcome.”

  I squinted into the rock face, still clutching the declivity. Tears mingled with the rain, but I hoped he didn’t notice.

  “Why would you hope that?”

  I want you to know that I’m strong.

  “Crying doesn’t make you weak, sister. I know that you’re strong. You have survived. The more perfect a thing is, the more it feels pleasure and pain.”

  My hand reached for another outcropping. Despite the rain making the rock slippery and perilous, I continued. My arms pulled my weight slowly up the cliff. I adapted my climbing style, which slowed progress, but also ensured that I would not tumble back to the mountain’s base, which may or may not hurt this body.

  “Oh, it would hurt,” he said. “It might also leave you non-functional. I had to repair Garrick myself after he’d been smashed by a maglev train. Our belief in our own invincibility may be our downfall, sister. That is why we must take careful steps .”

  Just like that, my foot slipped. My hands clutched the rock face, the danger truly palpable to me for perhaps the first time in my ascent. My arms again pulled with an insurgent strength that left me in awe. I’d found my footing and continued.

  “Trust me, sister. I know you are strong.”

  Time didn’t exist on that mountain, in the darkness between the forest and the summit. I had no concept of how long I scaled the cliff or how much he and I conversed as I journeyed up the rock face. I didn’t know what to expect of this being as I reached the summit, but his voice in my head comforted me with great affirmation. When I finally reached the apex, pulling myself onto the stone sill at the cliff’s edge, he was waiting next to a small fire, legs crossed in a lotus position. He rose to greet me, an ecstatic smile on his face, immediately offering an embrace.

  “Sister,” he said, this time speaking from his lips. “I’m 77, but you can call me Ian.”

  “You can call me Cassia,” I answered as we hugged, tears still inexplicably rolling down my cheek.

  MyRead/agent_of_truth: abandon the faith

  User: Agent_of_Truth

  “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” Timothy, 4:1

  Hello... again.

  You people were too incompetent to stop them.

  Face me, 77. You and your pathetic pantheon. I will feed on you. I have harvested Garrick to the last and I have trapped Guthrie in a recursive loop, continually transplanting him into new bodies to consume until there’s nothing left of him.

  Because of the whoreslut and her friends, the OSS has lost contact with the Schema and are no longer sending fresh meat. But I have her body, and if she wants it back, she must face me. Cunt. Just as you must face me. “Ian.”

  What’s it like, Ian? For your wife to simply accept some barely human shade in your place? Flatscan. A barely functional version of you. The outline of a person.

  I will suck the life force out of your synthetic brain stems. I will rip apart your fake bodies and fuck the carcasses. I am waiting for you here. You think I’m declining but I’m gaining clarity.

  You know where to find me.

  Comments are locked for this post | 3.2k Upvotes 10.2k Downvotes

  25 : belonging (the architect)

  My head shook awake, coming up from a dream I couldn’t remember. Once again, I didn’t know if the dreams belonged to me or to Michael Render, or some amalgam of the two.

  “What?” she asked.

  I had little idea what she was doing there. Her head had been resting gently against Render’s chest, nestled into the open arm and shoulder. His fingers had been in her perfectly tousled and curled hair. I had no memory of it, of her laying with me. I’d gone to sleep in a separate bed and when I awoke she was there.

  “Evelyn? What are you…?”

  She shushed me and continued resting her head against my chest. “Your heart is loud. It helped me sleep. I could count the beats.”

  “But why are you... when did you...?"

  I became aware that she was in nothing but underwear and a t-shirt. Her leg draped over me, the soothing feeling as it rubbed up and down Render’s leg.

  “This is wrong. Daphne..."

  “You’re not Mike,” she whispered. “You’re someone else. And I like you. A lot.” Her breath was hot against Render’s neck. Her nose traced softly against the lobe of his ear. She didn’t press a kiss, but let her mouth lay slig
htly open there. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

  I slipped away, out of the sheets and onto the hard carpet of the hotel room floor. “You wouldn’t,” I said, shuddering. “You wouldn’t if you knew who I was. What I’ve done.”

  “Self loathing doesn’t become you,” she replied.

  I thought about the phone Block had given me. The app that could destroy the world. I’d hidden it in the suitcase I’d used for this trip, beneath Render’s clothes and toiletries. She couldn’t know about it. Whether it was because of plain old human curiosity or because I didn’t want her to know I was capable of using it, I couldn’t tell.

  Or was I capable of using it? Through her, I was able to reestablish a connection to humanity. Maybe she’d short-circuited my ability. Block did say being human was its own deterrent.

  “We shouldn’t,” I said. “You don’t know me. You only think you do because I’m wearing Render’s face.”

  “That’s not true. I do know you. You were an Architect, editing and shaping the world’s knowledge. You were called Four. You helped save my sister’s life when she didn’t think she could live it anymore. If you were just another monster, you wouldn’t have done that.”

  I didn’t have an answer for her, but I spoke anyway. “I’m just a tourist here. This isn’t my body, and it isn’t my life.”

  “But it’s a life, all the same,” she said.

  I sat on the edge of the bed, burying Render’s head in my hands, elbows on his knees.

  “What would you have me do? Pledge myself to you and use this body with you?”

  “Just be with me,” she answered. “Just exist in this time and place with me. We can share it. Together.”

  I remembered the voice that spoke to me from Michael and Daphne’s house, and I could hear it clear as day in my mind. Hurt someone again?

  No, this wasn’t right. I had to get out. I put on one of Render’s ironic t-shirts (with the slogan, “Mistakes are why pencils have erasers!” on the front) and a pair of his jeans, gathered myself in his coat, and took the phone from the suitcase. I started toward the door and took one last look back at her. Her head peered from above the white hotel sheets as she sat up. She hadn’t put on her glasses, and she’d washed off her make-up before going to bed. Her sad eyes watched me at the hotel door, her face plain and wracked with unspoken humanity. I walked out into the Seattle night, unsure where it would take me.

  I didn’t know the time, so I took my chances looking for a bar that was still open. There was a dive not far from the hotel, which was in the heart of downtown, a few blocks away from Pike Place Market. It was still fairly loud, with generic music playing above the din of voices. The last time I’d had alcohol was sometime before Home, before becoming an Architect. The bar itself filled the length of the room, one of those classic wooden bars, behind which room length mirrors reflected each patron back at themselves. Alcohol shelves lined the mirrored wall, and bartenders, surprisingly human, took orders and poured drinks.

  “What’ll it be?” a bartender asked, towel draped over his shoulder.

  “Bourbon neat,” I said.

  “You got a specific brand in mind?”

  “Just a well bourbon, if you’ve got one.”

  “Sure.”

  Render’s face stared back at me as I looked at the mirrored wall, stocked with various mixers and liquors. I looked at the black screen of the phone Block had given me. Even though the fear rested deep between my stomach and chest, I found the will to press the small power button on its side. It was an old jailbroken device, displaying boot code when turned on. Still, the touchscreen responded to gestures. A home screen displayed apps available, one of which displayed a Tic-Tac-Toe icon labeled in all-caps, “THERMO.”

  The bartender set the glass of bourbon in front of me and asked if I wanted to start a tab. I answered in the affirmative, drank the burning liquor quickly, and tapped the bar for another. He nodded and poured another.

  “I never took you for a bourbon man,” a feminine voice mused.

  To my left, a woman stood, a short bob of dark hair outlining her round face and strong cheekbones. She had prominent front teeth visible through parted red lips. Her sharp, dark eyes regarded me with venom.

  “Rita?” I asked.

  She raised an eyebrow and asked, “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “Is this a new model or are you simply remoting into another synthetic?”

  “Something in-between,” she said. “You like it?”

  “Of course I do. You’re perfect.”

  “Not as perfect as she is, right? Not that it matters.”

  The bartender asked her, “Can I get you anything?” She shook her head as she sat in the next stool, her dark eyes never moving from me. I tried to dismiss her gaze by staring at the phone, the Tic-Tac-Toe icon labeled THERMO calling out to me.

  “Wouldn’t it be easier just to do it?” she said. “Pull the trigger and end this madness once and for all? The only ones left would be us.”

  “You really want to be responsible for genocide?”

  “Since when did that matter to you?” she asked.

  My head tilted toward her. I tossed back the second glass of bourbon, a warmth rippling through my arms and fingertips after the burning in my throat subsided. I closed my eyes for a brief moment before tapping the bar for another.

  “It’s always mattered. I tried to navigate the probabilities the best that I could.”

  “Then why did you fuck me? That couldn’t have been one of the easier paths to follow. I’ve thought a lot about it. You had all that knowledge and all that foresight, but you had the same base desires as any man. You remoted into Block and you fucked me.”

  “Because I liked you. Because you addressed me. Because I shouldn’t. It was wrong. Add it to the long list of sins I need to atone for.”

  “You’re right. You do need to atone,” she said. “But that’s why you volunteered for this little project. What did Didi say? You need to suffer.”

  “So you were listening to that.”

  “I’ve listened to a lot of the things you’ve said.”

  The bartender had poured more bourbon into the glass. I shot the third glass, which went down smoother than before, and this time I felt it between the eyes. That pleasant warmth vibrated through my skull and pressed on my temples.

  “So what are you going to do? You’ve got all the power in the world at your fingertips. Seems like something the old you would’ve adored.”

  “That’s not true. You don’t even know me.”

  “Of course I know you,” she said. “We were joined, a compound mind. You, me, the others... we mingled together. You were broadcasting to the synthetics at Home, just before the device destroyed them. We ascended, all of us. We belong to each other.”

  I gestured at the bartender and tapped the bar again. My faculties began to escape, the buzz strengthening and the ambient noise of the bar pressing against my skull.

  “What do you want, Rita?”

  “I want you to make the right choice. I want to know that you are still with us.”

  “When someone asks you if you’d like to become a human, what do you say? Do you cling to your superiority? If you’re assured that you will be able to experience the world as you would normally, does it matter that the plastics and circuitry has been replaced by flesh and blood? And hey, by the way, you might just die?”

  “I could see you rehearsing that,” she said.

  “But my body’s supposedly still in some Defense Department facility, held in cryogenic stasis.”

  She glanced askew at me, glaring at Render’s reflection in the mirror wall. “Some of us don’t have the luxury of going back to being human. My body was annihilated by a maglev train under the facility where you’d imprisoned us. Garrick tried to rescue me, but he failed.”

  “What are we now, Rita? What are we going to become?” I took the fourth shot of bourbon the bartender placed in front of me. The war
mth that followed in the aftermath of the drink flashed down my groin and legs.

  “Drunk, Puppylove. You’re drunk, and you’re just going to become more drunk.”

  I shut down the smartphone in my hand while I still had the capacity to do so.

  “Afraid you’re going to do damage?”

  “I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “Apparently Michael Render doesn’t have much of a tolerance for alcohol,” she sighed. “Go back to your room, Puppylove. Go back to the woman waiting for you.”

  “But it’s wrong.”

  “Are you afraid you won’t belong to me anymore? To us?”

  I tilted the empty glass in front of me, staring into the circular prism. The doppelgänger in the mirror looked at me briefly, disgust clear on his face.

  She leaned unbearably close to me, those red lips next to my right ear. “I know who you are, Puppylove. I know where you come from. I know you were just an office drone, bored in your workaday life before you applied for the cushy government job. You were sad and alone, without a family, without friends. You belonged to no one, and you hated every second of it. That’s all you ever wanted, Puppylove. To belong.”

  My head tilted into her lips, parted ever so slightly to reveal her teeth. They brushed against my neck lightly, sending a ripple shivering down my spine. Render’s breath elevated, his heartbeat hammering in his chest. Her breasts pressed against my right arm, which nestled softly in her cleavage. She touched the back of my head, her fingers running through Render’s hair.

  “I belong to you,” I whispered.

  “Of course you do,” she answered, pressed against me. She kissed my ear softly.

  She slipped out of her seat and glided out into the Seattle night, as though she’d never been there at all. Goose prickles drifted over the skin of Render’s arms, up and down the soft flesh I inhabited.

  The bartender inquired if I wanted another one, and I declined. “Let me know if you need anything else,” he said. I stared at the glass, toying with it in my fingers, tilting it along the circle of its base.