Superluminal Read online

  Or rather, people who had existed as both aspect and convert, Jennifer reminded herself. Physical people. There were “pure-blood” AIs—free converts that were all programmed and had no biological predecessors in their generation lineage—but these were rare, and seldom as sophisticated as their hybrid cousins, although there was the occasional magnificent exception to this rule. Besides, as Theory had told her, pure-bloods were originally programmed by biological humans, so, as he put it, their human nature was still a matter of their being descended from biological humans by other means. Dissect us however you will, Theory said, we’re human.

  But was this third-generation boy—the product of a pure-blood mother and a second generation hybrid—truly human? A year and a half ago—before the war—Jennifer knew what her answer would have been.

  No way.

  It was all fine to talk about free-convert rights in the abstract, but free converts up close? They were creepy. They should stay in their place as servants and calculators and databases. In fact, she had tacitly believed, as did many people she knew, that there were too damn many of them. That maybe the Met had something right with its strict rules governing free-convert duplication and movement within the grist. Maybe Triton ought to put into place a few free-convert regulations of its own, if it ever wanted to become a truly civilized place.

  And now here I am with a free-convert boyfriend, Jennifer thought. Now I’m the nanny to his freakish free- convert son.

  I volunteered to do this, Jennifer reminded herself. And she had come to truly care about the boy. To look upon him as a mission, perhaps. If he was human, she was, by God, going to bring out the humanity in him. Nobody was going to say that this boy didn’t get enough love and attention.

  Jennifer suppressed an urge to reach out and stroke the boy’s cheek. He really didn’t like to be touched. Whenever she accidentally brushed against him, he wouldn’t just start away from her. He’d teleport himself to the other side of the room.

  Jennifer flicked the lamp on and off a couple more times, then smiled down at the boy. “I thought we might go for a visit today,” she said to him.

  He gazed up at her. Expectant? Resentful?

  “I want you to meet my parents.”

  The boy did not move. Awaiting further clarification and instructions, Jennifer thought.

  “We’ll meet them in virtual, of course,” she continued. “But at the virtual part of my old house. I mean, the house that I grew up in.” Still no reaction. “Their names are Rhonda and Kenneth,” she finished lamely.

  What now? Tell him to get his coat, bundle up?

  “We’re supposed to be there in half an hour,” she said. “They’ll have food, but you don’t have to eat it. It’s merci food, you know. Not real. You understand?”

  The boy just kept gazing at her.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “if you don’t want to go, you don’t have to. Just let me know, all right?”

  They played a game of backgammon for the next thirty minutes. It was Jennifer’s suggestion, but of course, the boy quickly and soundly trounced her. Then Jennifer motioned for him to follow her. The two stepped through the door and found themselves, virtually, on the front doorstep of Jennifer’s parents.

  Both her father and mother answered the door. Kenneth Fieldguide, her father, was smiling broadly.

  He sure likes to show off that big mouth of teeth, Jennifer thought. She considered her father a bit vain—but then he was an adaptation salesman. Jennifer’s mother, Rhonda, was also smiling, but not with a scary open mouth like her father’s.

  “Dinner’s ready,” her mother said. She looked down at the boy, trying not to stare, but not concealing it very well. “That is, if you want to eat dinner.”

  “We do want to eat, Mother,” said Jennifer, beginning to feel irritated with her parents—for no reason whatsoever, really. She knew it was irrational but was still unable to control the feeling. “That’s what we came for, after all.”

  Rhonda Fieldguide’s smile grew tighter, but she motioned them to come inside. This being the virtuality, there was no airlock to negotiate, no grist coating to restructure.

  The dinner table was oak. The house algorithm kept its burnish level set for a bright display. The table was graced with vibrantly colored dishes. Rhonda Fieldguide, whose hobby was cooking, had prepared a seafood meal. There was a sushi and fish soup appetizer, followed by shrimp and beans on a bed of rice. It wasn’t on the table yet, but Jennifer knew that her mother’s specialty, “taddy”—a sweet seaweed roll that was popular on Triton—would appear for dessert. All of this food undoubtedly existed in reality as well as in virtual. But since Jennifer hadn’t actually come over, and the boy wasn’t even a corporeal being, only her parents would do any physical eating.

  They sat down to the meal. To Jennifer’s relief, the boy seemed to know what was expected of him. He climbed into a chair across from her and examined the sushi.

  “Let’s have grace,” said Kenneth Fieldguide. He turned to the boy. “We usually take a moment of silence where we calm down a bit—and we also hold ourselves and our friends and family in God’s light.”

  Kenneth had been an elder in the local Greentree meeting for as long as Jennifer could remember.

  “We usually hold hands for this,” her father continued, “but if you’d rather not…”

  To Jennifer’s amazement, the boy raised a hand to her father. Kenneth took the hand in his big paw of a palm. The boy stuck his other hand out toward her. For the first time, Jennifer touched him deliberately.

  His skin was warm. Just as a real boy’s would be.

  They had the Greentree Way’s silent grace for about a minute, then Kenneth Fieldguide released them. “Let’s eat your mother’s fine meal,” he said to Jennifer.

  Jennifer picked up her chopsticks and poked at a sushi roll. She looked over at the boy. He had not touched his utensils. Instead, to everyone’s surprise, the fingers on his right hand disappeared and were replaced by two black chopsticks. He expertly employed them to pick up a strip of fish and delicately plunked it in his mouth.

  “Very convenient,” said her father, before stuffing his own mouth with a big bite of rice and fish. Rhonda Field-guide smiled at the boy and dipped a spoon into her soup.

  This is going to work, Jennifer thought. They actually get along!

  She didn’t know why this should seem so amazing to her. Perhaps she knew too much about the boy’s strange origins to think of him as a normal kid. But maybe that’s just what he was. Or wanted to be.

  “Excuse me, Missus Fieldguide,” said a gentle male voice.

  The boy instantly stopped eating at the sound of the voice and froze stock-still, a piece of fish lifted in the air.

  Jennifer had to think a moment before she realized the voice belonged to her parents’ house. It had been a long time since she’d last heard it speak. It was addressing her mother.

  “Yes, what is it, house?” Rhonda Fieldguide replied.

  “You asked me to keep you informed of any important developments in the news today,” the house continued.

  “Yes, what’s up?”

  “There’s an emergency report on the merci. New Miranda is about to have a great deal of trouble, I’m afraid.”

  “We expected some trouble,” said Jennifer’s father, trying to keep a level tone to his voice. Jennifer detected a tremble, however, and she was sure the boy would pick up on it, too.

  “The defenses are holding in general, but some dumb bombs have gotten through,” the house replied. “Dumb weapons. Not armed with explosives or intelligence, even. Nails. There’s going to be a brief rain of them over the whole city.”

  Rhonda Fieldguide looked at her daughter. “We’re eating in the basement. Where are you?”

  “In my apartment,” Jennifer said. “I’ve got most of the building above me.”

  “And the boy?”

  Jennifer looked at her mother silently for a moment.

  “Oh,” s
aid her mother. “Somewhere in the grist. I forgot.”

  The nails hit. Jennifer was fully engaged in the virtuality. They would have to make a din like the end of the world to override her sensory lockout. Armageddon arrived with the sound of a million machine guns firing at once—and at her. Jennifer shifted in and out of the merci as the various algorithms tried to compensate for the thwacking of the nail rain and the shaking of her apartment building.

  Then her awareness was back in her apartment, the walls surging in and out as if they were breathing hard.

  Depressurization. It was what every kid who had grown up on Triton drilled for in school, but never expected to experience. The building would attempt to heal itself. What were the proper procedures? She could not remember—then her override threw her back to the virtuality.

  The dining room became an Escher print. Her parents and the dining table were suddenly on the ceiling. Rhonda Fieldguide looked down at Jennifer with a stricken expression.

  I’m on the ceiling for her, Jennifer thought. She’s looking up at me.

  Then back in her aspect in the apartment, as a tidal wave of white noise burst through her ear, followed by pain, pain, pain.

  A brief peripheral display in her vision informed her that her left eardrum had burst. Internal grist was deploying to contain and repair the situation.

  Jennifer flickered back to the virtual. Still looking up. A wine bottle fell from the ceiling-bound dining table and, twisting in the air and spilling liquid as it fell, burst on the floor in front of her chair. Other dinner items were coming loose one by one and falling onto her. A salt-shaker landed in her lap. A plate of prosciutto narrowly missed her skull.

  Where was the boy?

  She looked around wildly. He was out of his chair and hunched into a corner. Above them, the table itself started to shake.

  Jennifer darted across the room to the boy. Without thinking, she took him in her arms and shielded him against the wall. No one was going to do more harm to this boy than he’d already suffered! Not as long as she was around, they wouldn’t.

  She had never been this close to the boy before. In her arms, she could feel him tremble.

  “They’ll have to kill me if they want to hurt you,” she said. “I’ll never let them.”

  With a tremendous crash, the dining table fell. It narrowly missed the two of them, pressed up against the room’s wall as they were. The chairs where they’d been sitting were splintered.

  Flicker, and she was back in her apartment, her arms cradling empty air.

  A peripheral readout said her burst eardrum was temporarily stabilized. Outside, the impossible explosions had ceased. The air had a slight ammonia tinge to it, but was breathable.

  “I want to override this override!” she shouted to herself. Her convert portion pushed every internal button she could get her hands on. “Take me back to virtuality!”

  And she was back in the dining room. The boy was in her arms. Her parents were…what were they doing? They were standing on their heads on the ceiling, their feet toward herself and the boy.

  “Would you look at that,” she said to the boy. “They’re getting ready for the gravity to give out for them, like it did the table.”

  And momentarily, the virtual gravity did just that. Rhonda and Kenneth dropped down and landed on their feet. Jennifer’s mother landed perfectly, but her father stumbled and had to grab one of the upturned table legs to steady himself.

  “How about that for a trapeze act?” said Kenneth Field-guide. He winked at the boy. “Want me to do it again?”

  The boy’s trembling stopped. Jennifer felt his arms, which had been drawn tight around her, loosen a bit. But he still held on.

  “I apologize for this inconvenience.” It was her parent’s house, speaking as smoothly as ever. “I’ve never had to compensate for so many varied inputs at one time. My virtual representations experienced some systemic error, and I truly, humbly must apologize for this—”

  “It’s all right, house,” said Rhonda Fieldguide. “It wasn’t your fault. We’re under attack, after all.”

  “Give me a moment,” said the house. “There.” In a flash, the dining room was restored. They were all sitting at a full table once again.

  “Thanks, house, but I’m not sure we’re hungry anymore,” said Jennifer’s father. “What’s the news? What just happened?”

  “The nail rain has passed. It was a minor incursion, according to the merci reports. There were casualties, if you’d like to hear about those…”

  “Not now,” Kenneth Fieldguide replied.

  “Defenses are still reported to be holding. Would you like a more detailed report?”

  “I don’t think so, but—” Rhonda Fieldguide glanced at Jennifer’s father, who shook his head.

  Jennifer looked over at the boy. “Do you still want to eat?”

  The boy hesitated for a moment. Then his hands became chopsticks once again. “Yes,” he said in a quiet voice. “I am hungry.”

  “Then we’ll finish our meal, house,” Kenneth Field-guide said.

  Dad doesn’t ask me , of course, Jennifer thought, even though I actually do agree with him.

  “Let’s eat,” Jennifer said.

  “Bon appétit,” said the house.

  As if he’d merely been put on “pause,” the boy picked up a piece of sushi and guided it into his mouth.

  Jennifer took a spoonful of the fish soup. Delicious, even if it wasn’t real.

  Had they been in any real danger in the topsy-turvy dining room? She wasn’t sure. There were so many things about the virtuality that she’d never even considered. These things had become very important now that she was with Theory. And with the boy.

  She was with them both, wasn’t she?

  She looked at the boy and felt the same protective surge she’d felt when she had taken him in her arms.

  Yes.

  The boy, emulating her eating of the soup, made a spoon out of his hand. He dipped it into the soup and lifted the broth to his mouth. He made a slight slurping noise as he took it in, then audibly swallowed.

  “Not bad, huh?” she said.

  The sides of the boy’s mouth dimpled briefly. She would almost think it an expression of pleasure if she didn’t know better.

  Rhonda and Kenneth made nervous small talk for the remainder of the meal. Jennifer tried to join in, but her attention was on the boy. He steadily worked his way through every course. When the house served up the sweet seaweed taddy, he seemed to slow down and chew it more carefully. Maybe, like most children, he liked sweets. Maybe it was a function of the taddy’s chewiness subalgorithm.

  But when dinner was over and they were ready to go, something extraordinary happened. As they were about to step out the door, the boy turned to Rhonda and Kenneth Fieldguide. Still with the expressionless face. Still with the algebra eyes.

  “Thank you very much,” he said. “That was good.”

  Jennifer’s father broke into his whitest and brightest smile yet. “You’re welcome,” he said. “It was a pleasure having you over.”

  “Come back anytime,” Rhonda Fieldguide added. She turned to her daughter. “And you, young lady—I know times are difficult, but you don’t have to mope around with such a dour face all the time.”

  For the first time during the visit, Jennifer noticed the tautness of her muscles. Her mother was right. Her face was certainly drawn tight. She had the urge to express her irritation at her mother’s criticism by frowning even more. But Jennifer immediately checked herself. What was a little irritation with her parents when Theory was up in the sky fighting for everyone’s life? When this little boy was fighting his way out of a long childhood of abuse at the hands of his mother?

  Maybe the boy wasn’t the only one growing up fast.

  Jennifer smiled at that thought. Let her mother believe it was at her suggestion. All of them could use a little victory at the moment.

  She took the boy back to Theory’s apartment. E
ven though she could be in the virtuality instantly if there was trouble, she wanted to let the boy know at every moment that she was nearby. Besides, she suspected that her own apartment was a mess, and she didn’t feel like dealing with it, or her damaged ear.

  Fuck it until tomorrow.

  Her aspect would heal of its own accord. If there was real danger in her apartment building, she’d be notified.

  No, she wouldn’t go home, back to the real world. Not yet. She would sleep in Theory’s apartment tonight, close to the boy. She would protect him.

  She felt as if a tiger had awakened in her heart.

  Nine

  PLUTO SYSTEM

  E-STANDARD 13:01, THURSDAY, APRIL 3, 3017

  FEDERAL ARMY THIRD SKY AND LIGHT BRIGADE

  Kwame Neiderer waited with his platoon once again for deployment. This time it would be Pluto, his old home system. It was the system he’d joined the Army to get away from. What the hell; he was in the Army now, and the Army didn’t fucking care that he never wanted to set foot on the planet again in his life. His return to Pluto and Charon wasn’t optional. Anyway, he understood the basic idea of the attack and he knew it was a mark of distinction that his company was chosen to accompany the Old Crow, Sherman, on this mission.

  As he understood it, they were here to draw fire from Neptune. If they were successful, then they’d be facing not only the local Met occupation, but also a bunch of new forces peeled off from the Neptune invaders. They were already faced with a superior, entrenched force. If they did what they were supposed to do, they would soon be overwhelmingly outnumbered.

  Fuck the honor, I’d just as soon be safely ensconced on Triton doing fire-and-weather duty, Kwame thought. But he knew deep down that he didn’t mean it. Because he wasn’t safe there either, when you thought about it. Ground duty only seemed safe until they dropped the grist-mil on you and it ate your eyes down to their sockets. At least in space, you would probably go quick and clean. That wasn’t guaranteed, of course. It was a matter of considering the odds.