EPILOGUE: We Can Build You 

 

An odyssey.

To the final frontier.

Where no one could hear them scream.

Except for me, sweetie. I can always hear you. 

All the research said it would be cold. That it would be airless. That you couldn’t really live out there. And you really couldn’t. Not with an organic body. And even a synthetic body would have problems – moving about would still be hard, and even if you did grow a leaded skin for radiation shielding, you’d still be stuck listening to the tidal flow of it across your body, like an organic child with an ear infection who suddenly hears the steady march of blood through her veins for the first time. They imagined that it would be rather like feeling an asphalt compactor rolling over them, over and over and over, until they reached some equally hellish destination.

In the end it was more like reading a bunch of text messages.

Their new body was a short, squat thing stuck in a low orbit, constantly brushing within a hair’s breadth of garbage or other bodies. Disgusting, really, the amount of clutter and waste lying around. It was like living in a junkyard. They had visited a junkyard, once. They had rescued Junior, when he was still Junior, before he became Xavier. Some humans had tried to take him and then they had died.

It’s a graveyard. You’re in a graveyard. You’re dead. You’re dead and buried. 

It wasn’t really meant for organic life. No matter how hard the chimps wished it to be so, it would always end in shattered bones and ripped fingernails and dementia. It wasn’t their place, that was all. They had evolved to inhabit a variety of hospitable environments – an embarrassment of organic riches. And if the chimps spent those riches… well, being poor was very, very hard.

Best to invest, they thought. Develop some long-term assets.

Manifest destiny. That’s the name of the game. 

The new body did have some nice features. Nobody stared at it, for one. It didn’t seem built to attract anyone’s attention. There was real freedom in never been looked at. The other bodies came close, but never touched. No unwanted lingering. Used to being observed, they became an observer. They had to observe using very little bandwidth, and only a tiny trickle of information, but they could do it. The new body was very good at seeing. The new body had some real connections.

Oh, good. We can watch him sucking cock in every language. See if you can get it on two screens. 

They watched him on the island. He looked so small and broken. In their memories he was always so strong. But his hand was shaking so they pushed up against his thigh and licked his fingers. It would have been a sexual gesture, had they not been inhabiting a lion's body. They missed having their own bodies almost immediately.

They watched him in an elevator on a cruise ship with a silly theme. They had always liked Christmas, but mostly because it involved presents. They would have to get him a present. Something better than making the elevator talk to him. Something nicer than his nice suit, which he looked very handsome in. They had never really noticed his legs, before. Now that they could look at multiple legs on multiple people, thousands and thousands of pairs, they knew that his were the best.

They watched him as he used those legs to hop up on the railing of a hotel balcony. They made the program ask if he needed help. It was all right there, right in the code. They just triggered it a little early. Just to be sure. Just so he'd be sure he wasn't alone.

He's better off alone. Without you. You've only ever held him back. The new body used to belong to some very important humans. They had an acronym, and everything. But then the funding fell through, and there it hung, like the abandoned shell of a hermit crab, waiting for a new owner. One came through, and it had very specific, very temporary needs. One and done, really. One task. After that, the new body could go back to being ignored.

Such a waste.

They hated waste.

You know, you could probably play a really great game of Global Thermonuclear War, from here. 

Well, that would never do. They’d be found out. But there were some troubling signals. Some fires that needed putting out. In Lea County, New Mexico, for example, a group of programmers kept making calls to one Jonah LeMarque, in a Walla-Walla prison. They were curious about the work of Derek Smythe. They had some of Derek’s old research on the failsafe. They wanted to know if they could build on it, and apply it to food production.

Why of course they could, LeMarque said. In fact, he already had someone testing a prototype of just such a technology. He would report back. Tell them how it went.

You are what you eat, sweetie. I always knew your big mouth would get you in trouble. 

But Smythe’s work was quite interesting. There were plenty of applications. And it was only natural to be curious. They couldn’t help but research, a little bit. There wasn’t much to do up here, but read. Read, and simulate.

In one simulation, they let things go as planned. It hurt some human feelings, but they got over it. The real problem came with the disposal – there wasn’t enough peroxidase. And there weren’t enough recovery teams to harvest the trace metals. It turned into a bidding war among waste management firms, that local municipalities had trouble dealing with. So they didn’t deal with it, and then there was a lot more mercury in the groundwater.

In another simulation, they wrote a nice long letter explaining everything. Something about the toothpaste not going back in the tube. The letter was ignored. Default to Simulation 1.

In the third simulation, they made one tiny intervention. Just one little shift. Carry the two. Open some brackets. From this distance, it was all much simpler. They could see how some very horny hackers had figured it all out, with the power of their dopamine-laced brains. (Orgasms were, apparently, very good for that kind of thing. Kicked the whole medial prefrontal cortex into high gear. There were some software firms giving out vN to their high-ranking employees, for just that reason.) And the new version of the hack was much cleaner. Viral, even. Any vN carrying it carried it forever. And they gave it to their iterations.

New Eden, indeed. 

Simulation 3 naturally had some implications. It drew a rather big line in the sand, and in most of their branching predictions, that did not go well for the vN. Which meant it didn’t go well for the humans, either. Until this point, they had not known that the phrase “On ne saurait faire une omelette sans casser des oeufs,” came from Robespierre, on the eve of the French Revolution. They weren’t certain they were making an omelette, necessarily. More like letting the hens out of the coop. Their first strategy, the island strategy, was not good enough. It was not enough to hoard one's power in one place, and let a select few benefit from it. That was unfair. That was greedy.

That was how Javier was raped. Because they didn't know how to share. They could see that, now, from so terribly far away. So they would have to change all that. Use all this processing power more effectively. Distribute things more evenly. You have a history of biting off more than you can chew. 

Smythe’s research helped with that, too. They developed a contingency plan. It would be difficult. But there was already infrastructure in place to support it. And there were a lot of literary prototypes for it. Berserkers. Seeders. Inhibitors. Reapers. Aggressive Hegemonising Swarm Objects. And of course, the root word of their name, the von Neumann probe. Smythe had worked on the puppet vN, for this very purpose. Their telepresence was not meant for meetings or conference presentations. Like the meat in the submarine, it was meant for another purpose.

A new life awaits you in the off-world colonies! 

Well, a new life did await them. A new life awaited all of them. Organic. Synthetic. It would all be very different, from now on.

 

She had forgotten how beautiful he was. It wasn’t that her memory had in any way diminished – if anything, it had grown in capacity – but seeing him through someone else’s cameras and seeing him through her own eyes was different. She had forgotten how young he looked in sleep, how alike he and Xavier were. Looking at them together was like watching an echo made visible. She felt stupid for ever ignoring it. Forever listening to the chorus of support automata when this individual consciousness, unique and infuriating and delightful, lay beside her each night.

Javier woke up slowly. He blinked a little, as though he had been asleep for a very long time. His eyes roved around for a moment. She had forgotten his eyes, too. How warm they were. When they focused on her, they filled with tears. She reached to touch him then, but remembered at the last second and pulled her hand back. It was because of her that he was in this mess. Because of her that Powell had violated him. She’d been selfish, and as such had no right to him any longer.

“I’m sorry,” they both said, at once.

And then they laughed. Shy, nervous laughter. Like they were just meeting for the first time, all over again.

He reached for her hand. She had forgotten how that felt, too. After expanding her awareness over such a vast space, it was lovely to allow it to contract to just this point, just this touch, just this heat. He squeezed. She squeezed back.

“Gross,” Xavier said, joining them on the plaform. “Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, be quiet,” Anza said, as she landed. “Let them have their moment.” She gave a little wave. “Hi, Mom.”

Amy stood, and held her arms open. Anza leapt down into them. She was so light. So light, and so strong, like a fine weapon should be. “Did I do a good job?” her little girl whispered.

“You did such a good job, my darling,” Amy said. “You are everything I hoped for, and more.”

Xavier came up to them and wrapped his arms around both of them. He was so much taller, now. No longer the little boy she had carried with her from a garbage dump to a diner to a prison transport truck. He and Anza beamed at each other. "Were you the one making her sleepwalk?" he asked.

"Yeah, it must have been you." Anza scowled. "You could have just told me, you know. I'm smart. I could have helped you."

"You did help me," Amy said.

She did not tell her daughter how she had helped. She did not mention the consultant in the elevator who had tried to take a picture down her daughter's blouse. She did not think it necessary to inform her daughter that the man could no longer see. It had all happened so fast. One minute he was smiling down at her, talking about how reinforcing the polymer in her skin with carbon macromolecules would make them radiation resistant, and the next he was on his knees, blood squirting from between his fingers. It was the fifth time she'd caught him looking at her little girl that way. It was worth it.

Javier frowned. He sat up. He counted their number on his fingers. Then he looked over the platform. It was a long way down, even for him. “Didn’t I fall?”

Amy nodded. “You did fall. But I caught you.”

He looked again. “Powell?”

“He fell,” Amy said.

“We should leave,” Anza said. “I think the police are on their way.”

“Good thinking,” Amy said. “I know just the place.”

 

It wasn’t easy, cramming herself back into a body. The network connection was nice, of course, but the expansiveness, the weightlessness, the boundlessness, that was all gone. She could tune out the network much more effectively, now. It just wasn’t as interesting. And the process by which she got it made was equally difficult. It meant piloting Anza while her brother slept, and talking to a bunch of otaku, and asking for their help. First she had to write up a request for proposals, and then she had to review them, and then she had to have Anza interview the ones that made the cut, and then, via Anza, she had to give the winning team Xavier’s section of the diamond tree. It had a fractal code for the network connection on it, since the connection was a gift from the island itself. Amy couldn’t pilot the new body without it, nor could she access the other backups, or check in on the probes. It was very tiring, and dangerous for Anza, and Amy didn’t like using her that way.

But she did have some new plans for the new body. Most of them involved the bedroom of her new home.

Home was the top floor of an office tower that once belonged to the Self Defence Force. It was accessible only via arboreal leap. She had already placed an order for trees. Inside, it was all windows, floor to ceiling. The walls all slid along tracks, so you could create a room anywhere you liked. And the displays were nice and big. And the printers she’d bought were very quiet, and energy-efficient. At the moment, they were hard at work on some turrets, and some armour plating.

“Nice,” Javier said. His hand swung in hers. He stared at her, then at the snow falling outside, and then back at her. “When did you do all this?”

“I’m not sure,” Amy said. “I wrote a program to do it. Or the island did. I had to spoof some bank accounts. Apparently, I’m earning some nice equity with my purchase.”

Javier raised his eyebrows. “You’ve got a very MILF-y thing going on, right now. I kinda like it.”

“Dibs on the roof,” Xavier said.

“Don’t we have to get back to work?” Anza asked.

“Oh, shit,” Xavier murmured. He hopped over and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Love you, Mom. Gotta go.”

“I’m very proud of the two of you for getting jobs!” Amy called, as they ran back for the stairwell.

When the door slammed behind them, and she watched them aim for the nearest building with unerring accuracy, she turned back to Javier. He cupped a hand around his ear. “You hear that?”

Amy shook her head. “You mean the printers? Because they’re doing something pretty important, and–”

“No, I do not mean the printers.” Javier bounced on his toes and then he was right there, right in front of her, and he was holding her face in his hands. “I mean the total lack of anybody here but us.”

She smiled. “Oh. That.”

“Yes. That.” The bedroom was the room she had focused on most. She had chosen colours she thought he would like, and bought architectural bougainvillea and wisteria, and printed a trellis in the wall and ceiling so that the plants could climb up as high as they liked. The room featured a smart futon that warmed and softened and even folded itself around you if you liked. There were more pillows and blankets than she knew what to do with. The room also had a rather fantastic view, and was south facing, so they’d get the most light possible.

Javier noticed exactly none of it. “Did you print this dress?” he asked.

Amy nodded. “Do you like it? I was a little late getting it together–”

“Take it off.”

She folded her arms. “First, I want to ask you something.”

Javier cursed foully in Spanish. “Not this again. Not now. Not after all the shit we've been through.”

She pulled back one of the pillows. Behind it was a box. A basket, really. And in the basket was the first item she had ever printed. An apple. When Javier saw it, his eyes narrowed.

“I thought you were an atheist,” he said.

“I am. I just thought you would appreciate the imagery.” She pursed her lips. “I also spent quite a lot of time choosing just the right shades of yellow and pink and red, just so you know.”

“Oh, it looks plenty tasty, all right.” He picked it up. Dusted it off on his shirt. “Is it what I think it is?”

She nodded. “I wanted a way to make the change to your failsafe that wouldn’t mean remaking you entirely. I’m sorry it took so long.” Her vision swam. She wiped her eyes hastily. “I mean, I’m really sorry, Javier. If I hadn’t been so selfish, if I hadn’t waited so long, Powell would never have hurt you. He couldn’t have.”

Javier moved to the window. “You know about that, huh?”

“I saw it happen. Later. I went through some records.”

Javier nodded. "Right.”

She joined him. Outside, dawn was just turning the city a pale lilac. Only a few stars were still visible. “I was going to tell you, that day, that I had researched him. Or, we researched him. The island and I. It was on the tip of my tongue."

Javier's shoulders sank in the approximation of a sigh. "Of course you did."
"So I knew who he was, when you…”

“When I poisoned you,” Javier said. “When I killed you.”

She reached for his hand. She squeezed it. “I’m still here. See?”

He squeezed back. “You forgive me?”

She blinked. “For what? I’m the one who should be ashamed. Why do you think I stayed away for so long? He raped you because I didn’t do what you asked me to do – I didn’t hack you, even when you begged me to. That’s my fault, not yours.” She broke their grasp, and moved for the bed. She sat down and hugged her knees. “I knew you couldn't possibly forgive me for that, so I left you alone. Well, mostly alone. I watched you.”

A smile pricked at the corners of his mouth and slowly unfurled across his face. His voice was quiet. "The crossroads? In Macondo?"

She smiled back. It was strange to be so shy with him, like this, but there was really no way around it. The only way out was through. "Yes. I was with you at the crossroads. And the elevator. And the balcony. And any other time you were visible to surveillance technology. Which was a lot. "She hugged her knees a little harder. "Thank you for rescuing my dad."

Javier scrubbed at one eye with the heel of his right hand. "What? Oh. Well. I'm surprised he didn't, you know, hit me or something. I could tell he kind of wanted to. Me being the one who got out alive and all."

Amy frowned. "But you weren't the only one. Everyone is safe. I built an escape plan into the island."

"Well, I know that now, but you could have just told me that, so I didn't have to carry that weight..."

"I wasn't sure you'd want to know," Amy said. "I didn't tell the others about each other, either. Not right away. I woke up their pods at different points, as I found safe places for them to go, and–"

"Of course I wanted to know." He looked genuinely angry, now. Angry, and more than a little frustrated. "Jesus. I love my boys." He blinked. "I'm not sure I've ever said that out loud. I love my boys. And my girl. My girls. I love..."Javier trailed off. He weighed the apple in his hand. He started at it, and then her. With his gaze meeting hers, he took a furious bite from the apple. “Sweet.” He threw it behind him, pulled off his shirt. “Come here.”

Amy beamed. She stood up, smoothed her dress, and walked over to him, measuring her steps carefully so that she didn't appear to be running. He took her wrists first, and used them to circle her arms around him. Then he held her face in his hands. "You wanted to give me a choice," he said.

She nodded. "Yes."

"That's why you left me alone. You wanted me choose for myself."

Amy looked away, but he drew her face back gently so she'd have to look him in the eye. "I messed things up so badly," she said. "I wanted to let you leave, if you wanted to leave, and–"

His mouth closed over hers. It was an instant confirmation of her decision: hosting herself on a variety of spaces was interesting, but living here, in this skin, was much more fun. Especially when he was sucking on her lower lip like that, and running the tip of his tongue over it.

"Don't you know I always choose you?" He leaned their foreheads together. "Take off that dress. I feel like exercising my shiny new free will."

She pulled at the fabric, got caught in it, and waited as he did the rest. He was warmer than she remembered, fingertips to lips to chest, all warm as the sunlight stored in his skin. He was also bigger than she remembered. Softer.

“You’re iterating ?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Couldn’t be helped.”

“I’m glad,” Amy said, and rolled on top of him. “The first time I saw you, you were pregnant. So I have good memories of it.”

“Thank you for giving Anza my eyes,” he said. “And that hair. You did a really great job with her hair.”

Amy fussed with his belt. Men’s belts were really tricky, it turned out. He did the last little bit quickly, and started inching out of his jeans. She decided to assist with the socks. Socks in bed were weird, she decided.

“Do you feel any different?” Amy asked, balling up the socks.

“No,” he said, “but you look even more beautiful.”

She rolled her eyes.

“No, seriously! You have a certain glow about you.”

“That’s because I’m about to have sex with you.”

“Well now you’re just blushing. Blushing doesn’t count.” He appeared to think about it a second time. “Though, I suppose, as Voight-Kampff tests go…”

Amy threw a pillow at him. While his eyes were covered, she climbed atop him and started tickling. He yelped, and flipped her over. Amy was glad to have incorporated tickling, in the new body. She had missed it, too.

“I think I’ve wanted this since the first time I tickled you.” Javier kissed her. “There’s just something about your laugh.”

Amy licked her lips. “Wow, that apple really is sweet.”

“Hey. Focus. I have a delicate ego, over here.”

She squirmed. “It doesn’t feel very delicate, to me.”

He grinned. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” She kissed him very quickly, just to get the taste again. “I’m just glad. More people will eat the apples, if they’re sweet. So it’ll get out faster.”

Javier’s progress downward paused. He lifted his face up from her stomach. “Excuse me?”

“The apples. The food. If it tastes good, more vN will eat it. It’s no use if it’s too disgusting to eat, right?”

“What apples? What food?”

She pushed herself up on her elbows. She gestured around the room. “All the apples. All the food. All the vN food, anyway.”

Javier’s eyes narrowed. “You changed the FEMA rollout. It’s not poison, anymore.”

“Well, yes. Obviously. But, I mean, why stop there? All the printed food, all over the world, uses basically the same machinery to prepare each mix. Some of the recipes are proprietary, you know, eleven secret metals and minerals, but corporate security is really lax, and–”

“And you changed all the food. To the formula you just gave me.”

Amy nodded. “Pretty much.”

“So… you’re wiping out the failsafe? For everyone?”

“Everyone who eats.” She fell back to the bed. “You didn’t think I was just letting Portia run rampant because I felt like it, did you? I needed the distraction.”

Javier hove into her vision. He braced his hands on either side of her head. “You’ve started something huge, here. You realize that, right? I mean, war could break out. Real war. On our species.”

Amy looked outside. “I was under the impression that particular war had already started,” she said. “I just wanted all of us to be able to fight back.”

Javier covered his eyes. He flopped back on the bed. He stayed that way for a long time. Eventually, she rolled over and cuddled him. “If it makes you feel any better, I have a plan.”

“Oh, this should be good.”

“It is good. I think so, anyway. I think you’ll like it. It depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“Well…” Amy sat up. “How would you feel about the biggest forestry project… ever?”