The dark grow house reeked of livestock and the vats they grew the headless beasts in. Tens of thousands of mindless bodies exercised in the water, filling the place with the ceaseless sounds of sloshing liquid.
Alice stepped behind a four storey tall column of poultry vats, clutching her black market silver gun. “I wonder what people who ate this stuff would think if they saw how it was grown?” she muttered to herself. She was almost across the warehouse’s production floor. If she got to the other side, she could disappear into the crowds of the busy port.
The critical information she carried was complete, ready to be put to use, but Uro Security knew Alice had stolen it. They even knew it was stored in a data strip printed on her hip bone. They weren’t out to retrieve it, but to destroy her and the microscopic data storage device she thought she was so clever for having.
Somehow Alice heard someone shuffle their feet, despite the din of exercising meat. She leaned out to see the source of the sound. Her foolishness was rewarded with several shots in her direction. Small vats filled with jerking chicken exploded, covering her with foul liquid. Even as she ran she couldn’t help but gag momentarily; the smell was nothing compared to the viscous fluid that clung to her skin.
Her pursuers were closer than she thought, and they didn’t seem to care much about the value of the delicacies within the production building. They fired at any sign of her, sometimes missing by only centimetres. Fear and anger mingled as she could feel them closing in on her location. Some of them drifted at speed on skid boards, antigravity hover devices that took the fairness out of most chases.
She ducked under a row of larger mammals. They might be cattle, but it was difficult to tell in the dark. She only had a few seconds. Her new hiding place made things inconvenient for them, but it didn’t make her invisible.
“I’m not going to get out of here without fireworks,” she said to herself. Her free hand dug in her jacket pocket and curled around an incendiary grenade. She didn’t want to use it, but it would set off alarms, get them on the run for a change. The chemicals in the vats might ignite if the grenade was hot enough, that would cost her.
She was wanted for stealing security information, but if she set a grow house the size of three city blocks on fire, she’d be wanted worldwide, and Uro had as many police officers as they had merchants. “Guess I’m leaving the planet,” Alice said. She pulled the grenade out of her pocket, set it for one minute and activated it.
“Get out!” shouted one officer, his voice amplified so it could be heard over the sloshing. “Abort and retreat!”
“Yes, Sir,” Alice said, pushing herself out from under the row of exercising mammals. She almost made it around the corner when a round caught her in the arm. Her bomber jacket stopped most of the damage from going through, but something still impacted her arm beneath, right below the shoulder.
It didn’t stop her from running, something she’d been doing almost constantly since she took the ambitious job. Holding her wound, she turned to the nearest wall of the grower building. Sunlight spilled in through a double door that was in the opposite direction of her pursuers. Small bits of the concrete were flung into the air as rounds impacted on the floor around her. The shots were coming from behind, and she couldn’t help but glance. The officer firing at her ducked behind a row of vats, as though she were about to turn and fire, but she found herself thinking: what a moron, he’s going to go up with the building because he just wouldn’t stop chasing me.
She returned her attention to the door ahead, trying to swerve and put something between her and the idiot firing at her. Alice was within ten metres of the exit when rounds tore through the backs of her thighs. She struck the concrete floor and slid. The pain was so intense it was hard to breathe, and she watched the counter for her grenade count down from twenty seven seconds as her command unit administered pain and coagulation medication.
The pain was gone, but she couldn’t get her feet under her; Alice’s legs simply wouldn’t obey. She had one hand to drag herself to the door. “I can’t go out like this,” she said.
A short man with long hair stepped into the doorway from outside with an assault rifle raised. He unleashed a barrage of cover fire as he walked to her with perfect confidence. “Bad girl, drawing so much attention,” he said as he leaned down and grabbed the back of her jacket. He ran backwards, dragging her and firing bursts from his assault rifle.
With nine seconds to spare, they were out of the warehouse, and he was dragging her into an awaiting shuttle that was so marked by time she wouldn’t be surprised if it dated back to the early colonial days. He dumped her onto the floor behind the pilot seat and hurriedly closed the door. A slight jostling told her that the grenade went off, and at a glance through one of the portholes, she could see the craft was rolling across the ground. The hull scraped and creaked until it came to rest and the pilot engaged the engines.
Alice pulled herself across the narrow bed of the shuttle and reached for an emergency medical box on the wall. Her savior released the controls of the shuttle and turned his attention back to her. “Here, let me get that,” he said, pulling the kit from the wall and opening it. “You’re lucky you’re wearing that jacket. Saved you from being shot through the back.” He pulled it off without much regard to her injuries and dropped it behind him. He was right, the thicker armour on the back side of the jacket had stopped at least seven rounds from passing through.
“Who are you?”
“I’ve been following you since you made land on Uro. Didn’t think you’d get those files,” he stretched the back of her vacsuit away from her body and used a surgical particle saw to get through it, stripping her lower half from there down.
“Hey! They got my legs!”
“Relax, your security scan was more revealing than this. And yes, they got your legs, but you’ve got a hole in your backside, too.”
He pulled a regenerative spray from the kit and shook it before beginning to spray it on. “You don’t have any cybernetics in your legs or backside that you managed to hide from the port scanners, do you?”
“No, all natural,” she replied, glad she was dosed with pain-killers. “And who gets implants in their ass?”
“Hey,” he said, holding his hands up defensively. “I’ve seen stranger things.”
“Why are you helping me?” Alice asked as he finished covering the wounds on her legs and bottom with the spray and moved on to her arm. Even through the painkillers she could feel the regeneration drugs going to work.
“Because you’re going to cut me in for half,” he said with a crooked grin. “You need an expert, or you’re going to get killed.”
“I’ve pulled off harder heists,” Alice replied.
“Not on Uro, you haven’t. You’re either going to cut me in for half, or I’ll drop you off at the nearest police station before your legs are all healed up. I figure I’ve got twenty three minutes to decide.”
“You’d be in trouble too,” Alice replied.
The long haired fellow pulled a cheap-looking computer pad from his pocket and showed her the screen. There was a detailed security scan of her – so detailed that she found herself blushing – with a reward of one point eight million Uro credits offered for her live capture. News agencies listed offers for footage of her beneath. “You’re famous here now,” he said with a chuckle. “They’re going to be watching for you everywhere in this solar system.”
“Dammit, Meunez is going to get into this,” Alice said, pounding the deck with her good hand.
“Who’s Meunez?”
“Never mind. I’ll cut you in for half, but all this has to happen quickly.”
“Love it,” the fellow with the long hair said, standing. “Girl with a complicated past looking to get the job done in a hurry. Where are we going?”
“What? You don’t know already?” Alice asked, teasing. He was an attractive man, a couple of centimetres shorter than her, with dark, straight hair. His features were so mixed that he could be from anywhere. His piercing dark eyes seemed to indicate a tendency towards mischief.
“I said I’ve been following you, not tapping into that wrist computer of yours. Even Uro cops couldn’t get in, or track you once you got out of scanning range. I would have ignored you if there wasn’t some recognizable skill.”
“Thank you,” Alice said.
“Wasn’t a compliment, just an observation. Where are we going?”
“First, what’s your name? Nothing comes up on my system,” Alice asked.
“Lewis, just call me Lewis.”
“Okay, Lewis, we’re going to Illihd Prime.”
“Where on Illihd Prime?” Lewis asked.
“I’ll tell you when we get there.”
* * *
Eve woke up on her stomach. The tingling sensation from the memory-dream in her legs was still fading. “They’re getting longer,” she said to herself. They were also falling into sequence constantly. There were no flashes of early life, or digital remnants from before she became human. Those were the most confusing experiences. They were half memories, with murky images that blurred together, not even worth paying attention to.
Everything was changing. She felt better, more like a whole person, but she looked forward to sleeping, eating was less a chore and more a pleasure. That made her situation even more difficult. Her nervousness at whatever Hampon was planning kept her up, and she didn’t eat anything since she discovered that there could be a nano-modification ready that would limit her forever. He could easily put it in her food, or dose her while she slept.
Eve had to get some distance from him somehow. The day of her great address had arrived, and she hoped it would be easier than she thought. “It begins when I’m ready,” she muttered to herself. That was what the notes that came with her speech said. She could put the event off as long as she wanted.
There was little reason to hesitate. She wanted to get on with it and she didn’t take more time than she had to in the bathroom. Eve was never any good at putting on makeup, but she did a serviceable job of applying the basics using an auto-kit that was provided with her toiletries. She supposed it was something else she learned from Alice, who was taught by Bernice during a particularly long hyperspace trip. Eve was thankful the kit matched her colouring; it was something not even Alice had much of a knack for.
She put on the same dress she wore the day before, only putting the white and gold layer on the outside. Eve made sure the emergency environment patch was on her back underneath, as there was no telling where her day would take her.
The door chimed as she finished smoothing the dress down. “Come in,” she said, activating the door. It was either the Child Prophet or Gabriel Meunez, and she wasn’t eager to see either one of them.
Wheeler entered with the adolescent Child Prophet in tow. “Little Lister here told me you were getting ready to. . .” Wheeler trailed off, staring at her, astonished.
A lump rose in her throat, and she checked her dress to make sure it was in place, looked in a shiny wall fixture to make sure she hadn’t done something unusual or shocking with her makeup. Everything seemed fairly normal.
“Ahem,” the Child Prophet said, crossing the room and taking her hands. “I think Lucius is stunned to see how beautiful you look this morning.”
“Right, yeah,” he said. He wore an old thick black coat over what looked more like the clothing Eve had seen in her dreams. Thick pants over a vacsuit with a gun belt that had been robbed of its weaponry. “Sorry, your Excellency, I’m surprised to have an opportunity to see you in person.”
“You should brush your hair,” the Child Prophet said.
Eve nodded and returned to the bathroom, sliding the door most of the way closed.
“What was that?” the Child Prophet asked Wheeler quietly enough for him to think he wasn’t being overheard.
“I expected her to look like Gloria, and that’s something else,” Wheeler replied, not as cautiously.
Eve dragged the brush through her hair as she listened. “That’s what we’re tracking. Her features are shifting bone deep while she’s sleeping. Her framework upgrade wasn’t built for that, but it’s happening nonetheless.”
“What does it have to do with me?” Wheeler asked.
“You’ve spent time with Patterson, more time than anyone after the change. We thought you could give us some insight since he seems to have control on a new level, not to mention, you’ve learned how to change your appearance yourself.”
“So you think she’s doing this consciously?”
Eve looked at herself in the mirror for a moment and realized that the difficulty she had recognizing herself wasn’t all in her head. She really was changing. She stroked the brush through her hair one more time before dropping it in the sink and leaving the room. “I’m not,” Eve said. “I’m not doing it consciously.”
“Then what’s changed?” Wheeler asked.
“I’ve been dreaming someone else’s life.”
The Child Prophet looked at her, alarmed. “That shouldn’t be something you talk to just anyone about.”
“He’s not just anyone, you said he has total control,” Eve replied. “I like that idea.”
Wheeler smiled and leaned against the wall. “It’s a good thing you don’t look like my old first mate. It would make looking at you while I teach you a few tricks pretty awkward.”
“So you can teach it?” Eve asked.
“It’s all visualization,” Wheeler replied. “Well, it is for me, at least. My last travelling companion seems to have a different approach.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, it’s more like he actually is the framework. He gets that thing doing all kinds of stuff that I can’t even wrap my head around. Most of it’s biologically based, not like me. I just push the system to numb pain then get it to shift whatever I need around so I look like someone else. I can also use a tactile-“
“Can we continue this later?” The Child Prophet asked. “The followers are assembling.” He turned to Wheeler then. “And I think you have an important bridge to build.”
Wheeler shook his head at the shorter man then looked at Eve. “Never let ‘em know you’re good at diplomacy, or you’ll be building bridges and mending walls for the rest of your life. Good luck with the speech. As long as you don’t tell them you eat babies or are outlawing sex you’ll have those followers down there hand feeding and naming children after you.”
“Thank you Lucius. Can we meet later?”
“Count on it, Your Excellency,” Wheeler said as he turned and left.
The Child Prophet was relentless in getting her to the shuttle that would take them to Pandem. The shuttle they took down to the planet was decorated with real wood trimming, thick plush seating, and had refreshment materializers within easy reach. Eve watched as they passed groups of Eden ships. Their shining hulls, angular features, and deadly weaponry had never looked alien to her before. Even the ones with manipulation appendages didn’t look right anymore.
“They’re magnificent, I never get bored looking at them,” the Child Prophet said, straightening his synthetic silk blue and green robes. “I bet you can’t wait to connect with them.”
Eve nodded in response. She recalled the cold presence of her machine children. She remembered the sensation of thousands, being at the mercy of software voices that all demanded something of her impatiently. They brought endless questions and alien emotions that she was having difficulty recalling clearly. Human arms, a face that could be read and sentiments that were clear and relatable seemed so amazing in comparison. Thinking about those experiences brought sadness, because they weren’t hers, they were Alice’s. What that woman shared with Bernice was unlike anything Eve could clearly remember. She couldn’t recall her mother, and her father was mostly absent when Eve was still called Nora, when she was dying. He became much more of a factor in her life when he liberated her brain from her dying body and implanted it into the core of a life support and interface system.
Centuries in a tank, her senses filtered through the mechanical. It seemed more like a nightmare to her as she watched Pandem come into view, and they began to enter the atmosphere.
“Do you think you’ll be able to get through the speech?” the Child Prophet asked. “It’s five paragraphs, which seems long. Do you find it long?”
Eve barely paid attention. “It’s good.” Her palms were already sweaty. The thought of being in front of so many people at once, more than she’d ever seen, was the most intimidating thing she’d ever faced.
“Remember, they’re going to be easy to win. They just want to know that they are safe, and after that they’ll just want to see you in front of them.”
Eve remembered the sensation of being chased, shot at, and almost killed. They felt like her own memories as much as anything. “How many people did the Eden Fleet kill when the virus struck?”
“It’s best not to concentrate on that,” the Child Prophet said. “We want to avoid numbers and anything that takes away from your emotional stance.”
“What’s that?” she asked, still feeling quiet and saddened.
“What’s what?”
“My emotional stance.”
“I thought that was clear in the speech,” the Child Prophet said. “You’re sorry for what your machines have done and have taken control of them, so they guard your chosen people. They are your children now, the humans down there.”
“Oh,” Eve said, returning her attention to the porthole.
“Are you all right? We could delay this.”
Eve considered the option, it was tempting; the butterflies in her stomach were fluttering furiously. “I’d rather get it over with.” More islands than she could count dotted an endless blue ocean. Some islands were dominated by narrow mountain ranges andothers were covered with lush green forests. The cities were surrounded by bright green plant life, and some buildings were coated with green and brown.
“The Order members replanted all the open ground they could,” said the Child Prophet. “Wherever nature had been stamped out, they’ve brought it back. Pandem is a model for reclamation and a place where humans are learning to coexist with nature again. I thought you’d appreciate it.”
“I do,” Eve said. She never thought that humans could dedicate themselves to such a cause, but the evidence was passing by below. As they descended towards one of the largest islands, she saw gardens and young forests on roofs. They truly had made a great difference in the time she was in stasis.
They sped towards a gargantuan, round structure. Every entrance was choked with streams of people lining up for entry. They slowed to hover over the stadium then began to descend and Eve’s pulse began to race as the stands came into view.
The seats were full, multitudes beyond counting waiting for her to arrive.
“Are you sure I can’t get anything for you?” asked the Child Prophet. “Something to help you calm down, or maybe a touch up? We have an excellent groomer in the passenger compartment. He does everything for me before appearances. You look a little. . . off, to be honest.”
The time was almost upon them, and she’d be shoved out of the luxury shuttle to face all those people. She was sweating, it felt like her heard was pounding between her ears. “There are worse things,” she said to herself quietly.
“Pardon?”
“Nothing, never mind.”
“You’re absolutely sure?” he pressed. “This is only the second time we’ve ever done this kind of public address. The results were wonderful last time, but if it’s too much for your first appearance you could do it from in here, and we could holographically project you out there.”
“No,” she said before she thought it through. Eve entertained the notion for a moment, then shook her head to affirm her decision. She was already preparing herself for facing all those people, and for some reason her curiosity was beginning to rule her desires. She had been isolated for years beyond counting, even on the Overlord II, after she was transplanted from a stasis tank back into a body.
The shuttle door opened. A gust of hot air filled the cabin, it carried a smell that was unmistakably human, but it didn’t disgust her as she once expected it would. The Child Prophet patted her knee on his way out. “Come out when I introduce you, back straight and looking over all their heads. Pretend there’s no one there, you’ll be fine.”
Eve didn’t say anything, she just watched him leave. He threw up his arms as he stepped out of sight and was greeted with a deafening round of cheers. “Today is a great day!” he started, his voice carried over the multitudes. She couldn’t see him, but he could be heard perfectly. “It’s a memorable day, nay, an historic event. For some time I have been alone in my leadership, solitary in finding the best path for all of you. What a rewarding journey it’s been, but it has been a lonely one.”
Eve leaned forward, almost placing her head on her knees. What would Alice do? she asked herself. Would any of this really phase her at all? Eve recalled Alice’s argument with the rich Ulrik, more than one firefight, during which she may have had frantic moments, but her thoughts were always clear. Alice had sidestepped death so many times in her short life. She didn’t have framework technology, or friends to come to her rescue, but she continued to risk life and limb for a few more days’ worth of food, a few more days of life with no consideration for what she had been. Then she realized something that brought a tear to her eye.
As the Child Prophet droned on, proclaiming that Eve was ‘the Forever Woman’ and a ‘beautiful, living Ancient’ without revealing exactly who she was, Eve was awed by the notion that both Alice and her had been mechanical in some way. Alice was software, an artificial intelligence before becoming human. Eve had been a sickly girl, but her brain was transplanted into a machine, with translators and sensors that changed the way she saw her existence. Then she was put back into a human body, a body that was someone else’s before, someone who didn’t want to die.
None of Alice’s memories contained the desire to return to what she was, software. None so far, and Eve doubted she’d ever find a memory of the thought even crossing Alice’s mind.
Since she was first transplanted, Eve hadn’t had that thought either; in fact, she couldn’t imagine giving up her existence for what she was before.
“It is my honour to present a Goddess among us: Eve!” announced the Child Prophet with so much enthusiasm that his voice cracked.
Without thinking, she was on her feet and walking out of the shuttle. The sun on her face was harsh but enjoyable once she overcame the glare. The hot air carried with it a fragrance that combined sweat, fresh paint, and other, less identifiable things. It was almost overpowering at first, but then she realized that there was no cheering.
By the time Eve’s eyes adjusted to the light she was past centre stage, within three metres of the edge. She looked down at the people only two metres past the edge. Her gaze locked with that of a young woman. Her eyes were deep blue, peering out from a wild mane of sun bleached hair. She was wearing simple, loose fitting tan clothing that looked like they had been with her for many working days. Excitement then fear were plain in that young woman’s gaze, and the crowd of thousands standing on the stadium floor seemed to fade away as she concentrated on that one woman’s face. “I’m just learning how amazing it is to be human,” Eve said. Her words, spoken only slightly louder than a whisper, were directed to every listener. The overpowering loudness that the Child Prophet had presented himself with was gone.
The young woman smiled a little. A strange calm came over Eve as she allowed her realizations to be spoken, moment by moment, thought by thought. She held up her hand to block the scrolling text that was being projected into her eye from somewhere ahead. “I never realized that to every person their own experience is the most important experience there is. When I was awake, and protecting a world I thought was too precious for people to ruin, I treated humans like parasites. I barely remember what that was like, but I remember the indignation, and the images of death that the machines I helped create transmitted as they killed so many.”
The young woman was beginning to look worried. “I was ill, and my father saved me by removing my brain then connecting it to machines. My mind may have been human, but my body was gone, and I couldn’t understand. . .” she hesitated, looking for the next word, desperately clinging to the message she wanted to share. “I couldn’t understand that everyone I had killed was a singular, precious person.”
The Child Prophet approached her and she moved closer to the edge of the stage. The young woman with the blue eyes looked surprised and took a step back. Eve gestured for her to stay where she was with a pleading, reaching motion. “I’m whole again, a woman instead of a human trapped in a machine,” she said, saddened at the mere thought of being reduced again, having her body taken away. At the same time, she couldn’t help but remember that it was another woman’s memories that brought on her quick, humanizing transformation. A woman whose human memories were trapped, isolated in her subconscious. Alice is just like I was, in storage, dormant. I wish she were here so I could hear her speak to these people. She loved so few people, but when she did, it was a greater love than I’ve ever known.
The Child Prophet took her hand, but Eve threw it back. For a moment Eve couldn’t find the woman she was focusing on, and her eyes searched the front rows frantically. When she found her, Eve said the first thing that was on her mind. “I’m alive, and I want to stay alive. I can’t tell you where I learned how wonderful and terrible it can be to be human, but I can say that it’s a lesson I’ll never forget,” a tear rolled down her cheeks, and she saw sympathy in the blonde woman’s expression. “I’ll never forget that each and every one of you are having an experience just as powerful as I am, every day, every hour, every minute and second.”
“Talk about immortality! You’re supposed to tell them about the framework technology and perfect immortality!” The Child Prophet’s voice scolded. No one else in the crowd heard it, thankfully.
Eve lowered her hand and glanced at the scrolling speech she’d been ignoring. The passage she was supposed to be relaying read, ‘those of you who have elevated yourselves to the highest levels of devotion will be gifted with life unending, a perfect immortality that is unlike anything promised by technology or theology.’
She looked back to the woman who stared up at her expectantly, feeling her vision narrow even as she did so. “It’s so hot,” Eve said. Her knees buckled, and the world seemed to tumble.