3
Every Little Last Bone and Tooth
You’re roadkill; I should have let them eat you.
Amy could almost feel her graphene layers dancing to the algorithms that would retrieve her ability to scream for food. Her repair modules worked to patch damages with resources her body didn’t have. They shifted carbon, pushed silicon, redirected lithium, frantically covering the holes, the rips, the gashes. They hollowed her steadily from the inside, unravelling nanoscale threads of minerals from her hair and skin (what was left) and bone (what they could find). She heard feet, felt warmth–
Bite! Now!
She lurched, burning the last of her food-carbons on this gamble, her mouth snapping open and clamping down. Something rough and dry filled it before being crunched away. Her body sang, every molecule clambering for more, chorusing need. She was sucking something. It was rich, a wealth of carbon and sugar, wet and warm and a little pulpy where her tongue washed over it.
Tasty, Granny said. But the amniotic sac would be better.
Amy opened her eyes. All grayscale. Someone with dark hair knelt over her, clutching a smoking hand. The left thumb was gone. She willed her eyes to examine the wound, up the detail. Colour flashed briefly. Gray. Not red. Not human.
“Do you know me?” he asked.
Hungry, she wanted to say. More.
He entered a vehicle and brought out a blanket, then laid her on it. Amy’s memories showed her P-I-C-N-I-C.
“Come on.” He picked her up. What had damaged all those trees?
“Gonna make a burrito out of you,” he said, ferrying her over to the blanket. She examined her left hand. It had no skin left. Black spines poked out instead, like twigs. “No biting.”
No biting, Granny concurred.
He laid her on the blanket with her other pieces. He rolled the blanket up and her appendages slid together; she felt her foot near her eyes. He carried the bundle away and put it somewhere – her memory showed her images of C-A-R-S – and they drove off. As the trees rolled by, she saw other bodies: skin and skeletons stretched across the branches and boughs, heads hanging by their hair.
Those are your clademates, Granny said. Those are your aunts.
He found a place called a “campsite” and opened the “trunk” so light could come in. Then he opened the blanket and knelt over her again. He pinched her wounded skin together and laughed about a long-ago woman who taught him to how fold dumplings. A Zen thing, he said, after a while. Fill. Wet. Pinch. Over and over and over. Plate after plate of food he would never eat. Then he hummed a song about bones. Her memory had it tagged with the word “kindergarten”. The memory version was missing a verse: Now hear the Word of the Lord! He ripped open a packet of foil. “Feeding time.”
Her mouth opened automatically. He squirted something in there, held her down when her whole body lunged upward just to get more. He gave her more packets. Then his body moved and the sun peeked from around him; the space filled with light and her senses caught fire: her repair mods shrieked delight and got to work immediately. Warmth flooded her limbs. Colour bled into her vision. Words fell into place.
“Javier.”
His shoulders slumped like he’d put down something heavy. “You’re OK.”
“It was the sun,” Amy said. “The sun sped everything up.”
Javier sat back on his knees. He gave her a measuring glance, top to bottom and back up. “What’s it feel like?”
She considered. “…Fizzy. Like my skin is made of bubbles. It burns, but it feels good at the same time.”
Javier beamed. “Like a flood of energy, right?”
Amy nodded. “That’s right.” She winced. “Is this just another thing my mom never told me about?”
Javier curled his lip under his top teeth. He shook his head. “No, Amy.” He stretched his hand out into the sun. “Photosynthesis is something only my clade can do.”
She and the baby lay in the grass while Javier planned her first pregnancy.
“First you should find a nice human,” he said, pacing back and forth before a little fire of twigs he’d built. “Someone who’ll take care of you. Lots of vN chicks do that. Your mom, for one. Anyway, you settle down, and then iterate like there’s no tomorrow.”
Amy looked down at Junior. Already he seemed capable of focusing on her. His huge, dark eyes regarded her calmly. Amy wondered if maybe he saw Granny waiting, like a spider at the centre of her web, behind her eyes.
All your children will be stained with me. And your children’s children. I will live forever in their bones.
“I’m not sure I want to iterate.”
“Why not?” Javier asked. He flopped down beside her, picked up a foil pouch of vN juice, and sucked it back. “You’re tough. You can take it.”
Amy curled further into herself. The sun still felt good, and the grass, and the presence of life all around them, organic and synthetic both. They were in a place meant for families. She smelled smoke and heard laughter. High up in the trees sat a lost Frisbee the colour of cheap nail polish. Somewhere, someone was missing it. Maybe they were even thinking about it right now, like she was. If she concentrated on this possibility, she could almost forget the presence dwelling at the edges of her mind.
“What if something’s wrong with me?” Amy asked slowly. “What if I’m… messed up?”
Javier sucked bubbles from the pouch. “Messed up how? You’re perfect.” He frowned. “Well, aside from being a whiner, and a bad driver, and–”
“You’re not helping.” She rolled over onto her stomach. “I mean, shouldn’t my repair mods have rejected your stemware? I just adopted photosynthesis like… like a virus, or something.”
“It is a virus. My pigment cells are programmed to simulate the activity of cyanophages in ocean algae. Maybe that includes turning hostiles to friendlies.” Javier crumpled up the foil in his fist. “Who cares how it happened? The important thing is, you should iterate ASAP. Spread my seed around.”
See? He agrees with me.
Amy scowled. “You don’t even know I’ll pass on your trait. This might just be a phase, or something.”
It’s not. He’s inside you, now. Just like me. Forever.
“Does this mean I’m part of your clade, now?”
Javier blinked suddenly, like he’d been thinking about something very far away. “Uh… I don’t know.” He rolled over onto his stomach. “Our skin was only a prototype when our clade started working in Costa Rica. That’s why my uncles made sure my dad could leave; they wanted to preserve the trait. So you’re the first female model that I know of who carries it. That probably makes you a whole new clade.”
Amy liked the sound of that. “Do you think I could start sampling other vN? Mixing them all up inside myself until I came up with something… awesome?”
“More awesome than what you’ve got, now?” Javier asked. He pulled a blade of grass between his fingers and began peeling it into shreds.
“Look, I know your trait is really special, but–”
“I meant the total disaster you caused back there,” Javier said. “You annihilated your clademates. I’ve never seen anything like it. How did you do it?”
Tell him. You’re a born killer. A top predator. He’s not safe with you.
Amy pillowed her head on her arms. “I don’t remember.” She eyed him. “Why’d you come back for me?”
Javier visibly suppressed his laughter. “For you?” He reached into his back pocket and took out two folds of bills – the ones the ranger had given them last night. “Come on. Give me some credit.”
“You rolled me for cash?”
“I thought you’d be dead! You weren’t gonna need it!”
“Oh, so you’re a graverobber. That’s so much better.”
“It’s not graverobbing if you didn’t die. Which you didn’t.” Javier made a show of counting on his fingers. “That’s twice I’ve saved your ass, now. You’re racking up a pretty huge tab.”
Amy sat up and folded her arms. “Well, it’s a good thing you stole my money, then!” She pushed herself up off the ground and started walking.
The campground featured constantly forking paths that liked to hide themselves behind trees, the likes of which Amy had never seen before. This was good – she needed the time alone. While looking for some sort of interface tucked in amid the trees, she had rehearsed telling her mom and dad what had happened, but there was too much to tell: her new body and its new traits, Granny, Javier. She had no idea why she’d gotten so angry with him, earlier. It wasn’t like she could really complain. She rolled bodies for cash all the time in games. It was part of good scavenging, and Javier had already proved himself a great scavenger. It just stung a little bit, to be on the other side of the equation. It meant he thought of her as a thing and not a person, like she was just some stupid little in-game AI with no thoughts or feelings. She’d come to expect that from certain humans, but not her fellow vN.
“Sorry, could you help me?”
Amy jumped. She turned around.
A woman towing two rolling plastic water barrels nodded at her. She was very pretty, but in a human way, with the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corner of each blue eye, and brown roots beneath her black hair. The strap on one of her barrels had broken, making it difficult to grip. She held up the other barrel’s good strap in her fist. “If you get this one, it’ll make towing the broken one a lot easier.”
“Sure!” Amy grabbed the strap. “I was, uh, just looking for the showers,” she said. “Do you know where they are?”
The woman shook her head. “Don’t bother,” she said. “The hot water’s been gone all day. Geothermal regulator’s offline, right in time to ruin everybody’s weekend.” She made a show of sniffing the air. “Can you smell my husband from here? He’s riper than a pricey piece of cheese, right now.”
Amy laughed. “No, I can’t.”
“I swear this is the last time we go camping. He always says it’ll be better next time, and I always believe him, but he’s never right. Ever. You’d think I’d learn, but no. The bastard’s too damn handsome and he knows it.” She tugged the lead on the rolling barrel. “And he made me tow all this just so I could take a shower! Says he likes me when I’m sweaty. Perv.”
Amy rolled her eyes. “Sounds like someone I know.”
“Let me guess. Your human’s a real piece of work.” The other woman looked around the campgrounds. “You’re here with somebody, right?”
Amy paused. “How did you know that?”
The woman made a show of giving her an elaborate onceover with her eyes. “You’re not carrying any keys or wallet or anything. You must have left them with someone else.”
“Oh. Right. Yes. I am. I’m here with someone else.” Amy tried to shrug nonchalantly. “We sort of had a fight.”
The other woman nodded sagely, like she knew everything about it. “That’s been happening, lately,” she said. “Especially with your model. The failsafe failing can really kill the trust in a relationship, apparently.”
It occurred to Amy that she hadn’t yet seen her new face in a mirror. But of course what had happened at school had made the feeds, and of course she was going to be recognized. She backed away. “I’m not–”
“Don’t worry. It may surprise you to know that there are some humans who can be rational about this whole thing. Only one clade from your model that went weird, and they’re in another state. I’m not scared.” She smiled. “I’m Melissa, by the way.”
“Am…” Don’t give her your real name, you idiot! “Amanda.”
Melissa shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, Amanda.”
Together, they tugged the rolling jugs up a little rise in the road and into a campsite set far off from the others. Melissa explained that these sites were intended for RVs a long time ago, but that people had stopped buying them when they got too expensive to maintain. “We greened ours, but the thing sucks off the battery faster than a Tijuana–” Melissa stopped abruptly. “Well. Pretty fast, anyway. You know?”
“Sure,” Amy said, though she really didn’t.
The RV itself looked big enough to drain several batteries at once. It was all sharp angles and blocky shapes, not like the new trucks that looked like they’d been sculpted from marshmallow. Beside it sat a sandy-haired man in a lawn chair under an awning, reading something on a glowing scroll that reminded Amy uncomfortably of her prison guard. He clutched a beer in his other hand.
“You hear about this missing submarine?” he asked, not looking up. “Damnedest thing.”
“I brought home a stray,” Melissa said. “Amanda, this is Rick. Rick, Amanda. Amanda’s boyfriend – wait, was it a boy?”
“Um… yes.”
“Right. Well, like they say, assumptions make an ass out of u and me. Anyway, he’s being a real jackass because of that whole failsafe thing, so she’s going to be spending some time with us until he cools down.”
Rick put the scroll down and looked from Amy to his wife. “Is this because I wouldn’t buy you a puppy?”
“Deal with it, bookworm.”
Amy put her hands up. “You don’t have to–”
“Just do as she says,” Rick said. “Trust me. It’s easier in the long run.”
“I heard that,” Melissa said from inside the RV. “Now will you top up the water tank, please?”
“See what I mean?” Rick downed the last of his beer and put it on the ground. He stood. He looked vaguely athletic, standing up – broader across the shoulders than Amy remembered her dad being. He nodded at the RV. “Go ahead on in. Melissa can show you where everything is.”
Rick looked at the water barrels, then into the trees. Only now did Amy notice the total absence of either fire or ashes, or even the drying clothes and ice chests and speaker sets that she’d seen at the other campsites. The site looked so clean, by comparison. Rick and Melissa hadn’t been here long enough to spread out, or create much waste.
Something’s wrong.
Amy glanced at the RV. Its door yawned open, drifting almost shut in a hot breath of breeze before opening again, briefly exposing the cramped spaces within. They would have an interface in there. She imagined thumbing in the numbers and letters and hearing her parents’ voices. Hadn’t her mom always said that if Amy were ever in trouble, she would drop everything and come get her? That it didn’t matter what time it was or how far apart they were, she would still show up? Charlotte drilled it into Amy’s mind before she started school. No matter what, if Amy was scared or hurt or if one of the human kids got mean, she could always call and come home. “That’s true now and it’ll be true when you have your own daughter,” her mom had said. “There’s no such thing as a bad time for you to call me.”
“I can’t,” Amy said.
“Sorry?” Rick asked, frowning.
“I can’t,” Amy repeated, stepping away from the RV.
“You sure about that, now?” Rick asked, almost like he knew she was lying.
Amy forced herself to nod. “Yes. I’m sure.” She ducked her head. “Thanks for the offer. I have to be going, now.”
“Come back anytime,” he said.
Amy had already turned around and found the road. She paid little attention to her direction or how long she walked. Instead, she watched her white prison slippers slapping the black asphalt, its progress occasionally broken by treacherous roots or lightning forks once split by earthquakes, as she moved farther and farther away from Rick and Melissa’s RV. Maybe she couldn’t trust Javier with her cash, but he was right: her parents’ tubes probably were under surveillance. And she couldn’t involve strangers in this – especially nice strangers.
“You have a nice pout?” Javier asked when he returned to the campsite. He’d been gone by the time Amy had made it back. She spent the next hour trying to absorb more sunlight and quiet the hunger still whining through her bones.
“I wasn’t pouting.”
He smiled. “That lower lip of yours is telling me a different story.”
Amy folded her arms. “Where were you?”
Javier lightly tossed Junior in the air and caught him. Briefly, Amy worried about Javier’s missing thumb, but his fingers looked just as capable as ever. “Playground.”
Amy stood. “There’s a playground?”
Javier tossed and caught his son again. “What, you missed it on your epic journey? It’s on the other side of the campground, near the second set of bathrooms.”
Amy winced. “I guess I was going in circles. I didn’t even know there were two sets.” She nodded at Junior. “You take him to playgrounds?”
Javier’s brows furrowed. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“My mom never took me. She wouldn’t let me go.”
Javier rolled his eyes. He placed Junior on the grass. “Let me guess. She thought you’d witness some evil preschool brawl and fry your brain?”
Amy watched Junior place one hand in front of the other tentatively. With a sudden spurt of energy, he crawled after nothing in particular and came to an equally abrupt, rocking stop. She shrugged. “I guess so.”
Javier snorted. “Your mom was paranoid. I take my kids the first chance I get. How else will they learn how to play with humans?”
“That’s what I tried to tell her, but…” Again, Amy shrugged. “I guess I wasn’t very convincing.”
“Oh, you’re plenty convincing. You just asked the wrong parent.” Javier knelt in the grass at the far end of the campsite, in Junior’s line of sight. He snapped his fingers. “Mijo. Levántante.”
The baby lurched forward on his palms, then burst forward in another sprint of crawling. A few steps from Javier’s knees, he paused to look up at his father. Javier scowled. “¿Por qué tú estás sentado allí?” His head tilted, doglike. “The little bastard should be up and walking by now.”
“Isn’t that a little soon?” Amy asked. She sat in the grass next to Junior, criss-cross style. She opened her hands, and Junior beamed hugely and crawled eagerly into her lap. She lifted him so that he sat facing his father. “Human babies can’t even crawl right away, you know.”
“He’s not a human baby.” Javier pushed himself up off the ground, let himself into the car, and brought out three bars of vN food. He handed one to Amy, then picked Junior up out of her lap. “He’s my baby, and all my babies have damn strong legs.”
“Some humans only feel right when they’re in pain,” she explains. “It’s difficult for us to imagine, having never felt it, but pain makes them feel loved.”
“…Really?”
“Yes. It has to do with their hormones – adrenaline, dopamine. Organic things.”
They sit in one of a series of abandoned basements below a suburb that never happened. The foundations were dug, but no homes were built. Flashlights bob down the raw hallways; her other daughters are so industrious, so quiet, only giggling now and then when they bump into one another in the shadows.
“Mother?”
Blinking, she twists her daughter’s pale hair around one finger. “Yes?”
“Why don’t we live with humans?”
“I lived with humans once, already.”
“Was it fun?”
“Sometimes.”
Amy could not remember when her eyes opened and the dream of the basements faded, but soon the darkness around her solidified into night, and the noises sounded like animals and not people living like animals. Quickly, she dropped her hands – they looked strange, hovering in mid-air where her dream had left them. She winced, but Javier and Junior made no sound. When night came, Javier had spread out a blanket on the floor of the station wagon, taken a blanket for himself and Junior, and curled into a little ball with his back to her. Neither he nor the baby had moved from that spot in the meantime.
They look so sweet, Granny said. Like matryoshka dolls. Do you know that that word means?
“Be quiet,” Amy whispered.
Those nesting dolls. One inside the other. That’s what they call us, sometimes. Because of how we iterate.
Amy got on her hands and knees and tried to find the latch that would open the rear door from within. The darkness made it difficult, but she continued pawing at the surface until she found something like a button.
Inside of you is a perfect copy of me. Just like a little doll. Someday you’ll open up and there I’ll be waiting.
Amy pushed the button, popped the door, and slid herself out of the vehicle as quietly as possible. She didn’t even shut the rear door all the way; it took some slamming, and she knew it would wake Javier and Junior. She listened to the crunch of her feet across gravel, and heard the path change beneath when she found asphalt.
At regular intervals, sunflower lamps opened as her steps drew near, briefly illuminating the path and colouring the trees, before closing again as she moved on. This late, most of the campfires had died. Only the taste of their smoke remained on the air. The whole campground seemed asleep; she counted two tents lit blue from within by readers or other devices, but the only truly alert camper she encountered on her walk was a tiny, angry dog whose chain jingled once before his furious barks urged her away. At last she found the playground, right where Javier said it was, at the bottom of the odd teardrop made by the park’s main road.
She might not have noticed it there in the shadows, without the unblinking red eye of a security summons button to draw her attention. Every public space she’d ever entered had one. As she entered this area, a ring of sunflowers unfurled sleepily and cast a flickering violet glow over the swingsets and tiltseats. The lamp nearest a climb-frame model of a caffeine molecule blinked badly; perhaps one of its circuits hadn’t quite survived a Frisbee or basketball attack. Amy had no desire to climb the molecule, though, or to swing, or pretend like there was somebody on the other end of the tiltseat to make things interesting.
All the equipment seemed so much smaller than she remembered from similar nightly trips to her local parks, less exciting, less dangerous. The real danger was those sunflowers drawing attention; any botflies attached to the park would be here any minute now to investigate the sudden awakening of the playground’s devices.
Amy moved outside their glow, now, to a ragged field separating the playground from the bathrooms. The interface stood in this middle ground, carved into a faux totem pole, its screen clutched between the wooden paws of a smiling bear. The screen displayed the park’s logo and asked for a campsite number when she touched it, so the ping could go on her tab. But Amy didn’t know the number, and she realized now that she didn’t quite know what to say, either.
That’s easy. Tell your mother that you let me kill her sisters. She’ll understand.
Amy leaned against the pole and sank to the ground. Her elbows rested on her knees. “Mom never mentioned any sisters.”
Your mother never mentioned a lot of things.
Amy kicked the air sharply, as though that could shut Granny up. Her left foot grazed the rough edge of something hollow; when her eyes focused on it, she realized it was a box of some sort. Crawling over, she slid her hands around its surface: wooden, around five feet by three, slightly damp, splintering in places but otherwise solid. It had two sets of hinges at either of the long ends, and a set of handles in the centre like an old-fashioned cellar door. She yanked them open, and in the flickering light of the last remaining lamp, she saw a sandbox with a crumbling city inside it, complete with the remnants of roads left there by the evening’s last visitors.
Amy plunged her fingers into the cool sand and smiled. The last kid to play here had left behind a squat central tower with a tallish building at each compass point and a ring road connecting them. Other roads branched out from these, and they led to a smattering of smaller structures: houses, Amy guessed. Frowning, Amy sat on her haunches and tried to decide what exactly made her dislike the city so much. It was very neat and very pretty, and whoever had shaped the houses had paid great attention to making them uniform in size and placement. But the design itself made no sense; she had no clue what that big central building was supposed to be, or why it needed to be guarded by the other buildings and kept away from the homes. And if those other four buildings were places where people went to work, then they were awfully far away from the places people lived. The citizens would spend all their time on those long, rigid roads and no time at home.
With a sweep of her hand, Amy levelled the city.
“Continuing your rampage?”
Amy turned. Javier dropped out of a tree and joined her at the sandbox. He pointed at the playground. “You know, the real toys are over there.”
“This is a real toy,” Amy said. “I like building things.”
Javier squatted beside her. “Well, right now, it looks like you’re destroying stuff.”
She shrugged. “I’m just making room for something better.” She pointed at the fringes of the city that she’d left standing. “This was all wrong. I have to turn it inside out.” She frowned. “Where’s Junior?”
“Still sleeping.”
“Is it OK to just leave him there?”
Javier rolled his eyes. “I don’t think any bears are going to make off with him, if that’s what you mean.” He nodded at the sandbox. “What are you turning inside out?”
“The last kid’s design. I’m going to put all the houses next to each other, with a park in the middle.” She drew a circle in the centre of the box with one finger. “There. And then the houses go here,” she dotted the ring around the park, speckling the sand to remind herself where the neighbourhoods would go, “and then there should be some places for people to work, so their commutes are short.” She drew Ws in the sand near the homes.
Javier raised his brows. “I had no idea you had such a kink for urban planning.”
Amy started building her first house. “I just wanted to make it better than it was,” she said. “The old way, everyone would be on the road all the time. But this way, people get home earlier to do fun stuff.”
Javier smiled. “Wow. You really can’t wait to go home, can you?”
Amy’s hands hovered motionless over the houses she’d just imagined. To her horror, her eyes filled with tears. She had the strangest sense that if she moved a single inch, if she so much as made a sound, the tears would overwhelm her. So she remained perfectly still and silent. She stayed this way, frozen and quiet, until Javier gently turned her face toward his with a finger. Then the spell was broken, and she blinked and the tears rolled down, and she turned away again.
“Wow,” he repeated. “Just, uh… Damn. You cry just like a real girl.”
Her indignation put an immediate hold on her tears. “I am a real girl.”
“No, no, I mean – it’s emergent. Not a plug-in. Nobody told you to start crying.”
She blinked wetly. “Why would someone tell me to start crying?”
Javier shrugged. “I don’t know. Why do humans do anything they do?” He stood up quickly and made for the trees bordering the playground.
Amy stared after him for a moment. Then she scrubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hand and focused again on her sculpture. It looked so ugly, now. Her first house closely resembled a pile of dog crap on the sidewalk. She moved to wipe it away.
“No, don’t.” Javier reappeared behind her. He dumped two fistfuls of twigs and pine cones and dead pine needles in the centre of the sandbox, where she’d marked out the park.
“What are you doing?” Amy asked.
“My job.” Javier picked up one pinecone with his good hand and screwed it into the sand until it stood upright. “Planting trees.”
Amy smiled. She blinked the rest of her tears back. “Thank you,” she said. “I was just thinking that there was something missing.”
“You don’t say.” Javier jammed a twig into the sand in front of her little house.
Amy nodded. “You can be my landscape architect.”
“You can’t afford me.” He sucked his teeth and shook his head. “You gringos. Always trying to make us into your gardeners.”
Amy’s jaw dropped. “That’s not true at all! I didn’t–”
“Make with the condos, lady, before I let the kudzu run wild all over this thing.”
“OK, OK, I’m building!” She paused. “What’s a kudzu?”
Javier shook his head again, more softly this time. “Hopeless. You’re completely hopeless.” But he kept planting.
In the end, their city blossomed in fits and starts, and they talked about where to put things, and whether sidewalks were implied or not (Javier maintained that she should draw separate lines to indicate them, whereas she thought that any self-respecting city would have them already), and if decorative fountains were too wasteful. But when they finished, it looked real and lived-in, and not like a school project. Amy sat on her knees admiring it as Javier stood and stretched.
“I feel like I should be tired, but I’m not,” she said.
“Of course you’re not.” Javier pointed to a broad band of pink in the eastern sky. “Sun’s rising.”
Amy stood up. “Does it really make that much of a difference?”
“Definitely,” Javier said. “If it weren’t so damn cold, we could go up to the Arctic and stay awake for months.”
Amy tried to imagine living up there amid all the snow. “I think I prefer sleeping.”
Javier nodded. “Me too. Let’s go back to bed.”
“You mean the back of the car?”
“No, I mean the darling little B and B I booked us into. Of course I mean the back of the car.” He began crossing the playground, then walked backwards to face her. “Haven’t you ever slept in the back of a car before?”
Amy jogged up to meet him. “Not for a whole night.”
“Well, that wasn’t a whole night, either, so it doesn’t count.”
“It does too. I fully intended to sleep there the whole night.”
“So why’d you leave?”
Amy stopped short. She looked at Javier. He folded his arms and raised his chin. “I just couldn’t sleep,” she said.
Liar.
“Why’d you come find me?” Amy asked before Granny could say anything further.
“I couldn’t sleep, either.” Javier turned and continued walking. “You defrag to wake the dead. All those little twitches and moans.”
“I was not moaning.”
“Oh, so now my voice detection is off, huh? Just all of a sudden since I met you.”
“Maybe it’s been off all along, and nobody’s ever told you.”
“Trust me, I know a m–” He stopped short, and she bumped into him. He stood in a stream of sunlight trickling between the trees, eyes shut, letting the brightness wash over his face. Then his eyes opened, and he smiled down at Amy. “Your turn.”
He stepped aside, and ushered her into the light. It hit Amy like a wave, like the first time she’d ever visited the ocean and been knocked down by the tide. She even started a little and Javier’s fingers landed on her shoulders to steady her. She’d had no idea just how cold she’d been until that first morning light flooded her face. Her lips burned with it. She turned her head just to get more, to feel it on her ears and down her neck and across her collarbone. When she opened her eyes, Javier was staring.
“What’s wrong?” Amy asked.
“Nothing,” Javier said. “Absolutely nothing.”
Later that morning, it was Amy’s turn to wake up and find Javier gone. Not that she’d really slept very much; the sun streaming through the windows kept her right on the cusp of sleep without actually granting her the unconsciousness she needed. But even if she weren’t photosynthetic, Amy doubted she could have gotten back to sleep. She’d faced away from Javier when they crawled back into the car (he watched her get in ahead of him, and for a moment she panicked, thinking that she would put a hand or foot wrong and accidentally hurt Junior, until Javier cleared his throat and she hurried under the blanket), but for the longest time, she sensed a pair of eyes watching the back of her neck as the interior of the vehicle warmed and brightened.
They couldn’t have gone far, so she set out to look. More people walked along the path now that the sun was fully out. Some of them had even finished breakfast, already; she saw dogs licking dishes clean and humans folding up solar grills. Babies cried. Kids whined about boredom. Amy wondered how long Junior had before he became one of them. Did Javier take his sons to places like this often? Did they go hiking or photographing or birding or whatever else it was that these people – these normal people, organic and synthetic both, these non-fugitives – came here intending to do?
“Hey! Looks like you lost that game of King of the Mountain, huh?”
Amy blinked. Melissa stood before her, carrying a caddy of dishes. She looked Amy up and down. Belatedly, Amy realized she probably did look worse for wear: the combination of goo and sap had been washed away by the rain from her skin but not her clothes or hair, and last night’s epic sandbox construction probably hadn’t helped, either.
“Well,” Amy said, “you did say the showers were out, right?”
Melissa laughed. “You want to try it out? Your boyfriend would probably appreciate it.”
“What? Oh. Yeah.” Amy nodded. She examined the dirt under her nails. “I guess you’re right.”
Melissa led the way. “And I have an enzymatic spray for those clothes, too! You’ll be looking like your old self again in no time!”
Amy rather doubted that, but she followed anyway.
After far too much time spent in tall trees and crashed cars, the hot water was wonderful. This was also Amy’s first chance to really look at her new grown-up body – at least as much as the tiny closet-sized bathroom would allow. She still didn’t really like the knobby look of her longer fingers and toes, and the breasts were just plain weird. They seemed like they might snag on things. When she bounced on her toes, they didn’t jiggle like the ones on her game skins. It was a little disappointing. And why did vN women have breasts, anyway? At least on organic people they served some purpose.
They serve a purpose for us, too.
Amy ignored her granny and continued washing her hair. When she found her mom again, they’d have to get different haircuts. Otherwise strangers might think they were the same person. Would her dad be able to tell them apart? Of course he would. Amy would have different clothes, and different hair, and she would like different things. Dad would notice this.
Do you really think they’ll let you see him again? Granny asked.
“It’s all just been one big misunderstanding,” Amy muttered as she scrubbed her feet. They were positively filthy.
No, it hasn’t. They have every right to hunt you down.
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
It’s not about you.
Outside, Amy heard doors slamming and raised voices. Were Rick and Melissa having a fight? Maybe it was best to just get out of her hosts’ way. Amy shut off the water. She had probably used too much of it already. Squeezing her way out of the shower – wow, she was right, breasts were stupidly inefficient – she grabbed a towel and squeezed out her hair before scrubbing herself dry.
“I’m done! May I have my clothes back, please?”
She heard only thumping, and a sound of metal.
I don’t like this, Granny said.
Amy pulled open the bathroom door. On the other side was Melissa, and she held a gun. It was large and absurd in her hands, but her eyes promised business. “You know, for a girl who just got out of kindergarten, you sure talk to strangers a lot.” She made a come here motion. “Don’t make me melt you. I’ll lose the bounty.”
Amy stumbled back, clinging to her towel as though it could somehow help. “But…”
“Sorry, kid,” Rick said, pushing the door open the rest of the way and grabbing her still-damp elbow. “You seem nice and all, but a man’s gotta eat.”
He crowded Amy into what she’d previously assumed was the RV’s sleeping cabin, but was in fact populated by two big steel crates like the ones for housetraining dogs. One yawned open emptily. The other one contained Javier and Junior. Javier sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor with his son in his arms. Upon seeing Amy, his eyes burned.
“What’s going on, here?”
“Cool it, Tin Man.” Rick pushed Amy into the crate and locked the door. He reached over and flicked a switch embedded in the faux-pine panelling. An audible hum filled the air. “Watch the fence, OK? We lose the bounty if you’re corrupted.”
Amy glanced over at Javier and Junior. “Please let them go. They haven’t done anyth–”
“Your friend here is guilty of armed robbery as of last night,” Rick said.
“But the baby–”
“The baby will be taken care of,” Melissa said. She crossed her arms. “It’s not as though he really spends a lot of time with them anyway, is it?” She glanced into Javier’s cage. “I know your M.O. You’re not exactly Father of the Year.”
Javier smiled. “Still more fertile than you.”
“Watch it,” Rick said.
But Javier was showing teeth. “How old are you? Thirties? You look like it. You know your eggs are rotting inside you, right? Just sitting there, going past their expiration date. By the time the two of you scrape together enough cash to afford a kid, you’ll probably crap out something defective–”
“Hey!” Rick lunged for the cage. A spark shot between it and his hand; he gasped and cradled the hand against himself.
“Stings, huh?” Javier asked.
“Stop. Don’t make this any worse.” Amy hugged herself. “May I please have my clothes?”
“No,” Rick said.
“Rick, come on.”
“No, Melissa. We are not playing dress-up with the dolly. OK? She creeps me the fuck out.”
In the cage beside her, Javier was wrestling with his shirt. He pulled it off and started stuffing it between the links in the fence. The smell of scorching cotton rose inside the room. She was just about to thank Javier when Rick said: “I’d watch out if I were you, buddy. She’s a zombie.”
Javier paused. “What?”
“Cannibal. Ate her own grandmother.”
Javier frowned at Amy. “Is that true?”
“All the graphene. All the memory. Every last drop,” Rick said.
Amy blinked. “She… she was fighting with my mom…”
Rick snorted. “Tell him the whole story, Amy. Tell him about the boy your grandmother killed.”
“She was hurting people,” Amy said, hearing desperation climb into her voice.
“You hear that, Javier?” Rick bent down at the waist and got nose-to-nose with the cages. “She was hurting people.”
Javier lifted his chin. “You’re lying. The failsafe–”
“Failed,” Rick said. “Amy’s grandmother killed a kindergartener. And then Amy ate her all up.” He grinned at Amy. “You been hearing voices, kiddo? Feel like your skull’s a little more cramped than usual?”
Amy backed up against the wall. She tried holding the towel closed, as though his seeing her naked still mattered somehow. But she didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer.
“Is he for real, Amy?” Javier asked. “Did you eat her?”
All of me, Granny said. Every last little bone and tooth.
Amy clutched her head. “Shut up,” she whispered. “Shut up, get out, leave me alone…”
“There’s your answer.” Rick looked over at Javier. “What happened to your thumb, buddy?”
Javier closed his eyes. “Chingadera.”
“You know how she works, now, right? Her OS just opens up for any old code that wanders in,” Rick said. “Her skin’s already a little darker. Maybe her little ankle-biters would have had your eyes, too.”
I would have warned you about how this worked. But you were busy biting out my throat.
“I’m sorry.” Amy covered her face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”
Javier muttered something in Spanish. He pulled his shirt back. “I wondered what you were really in for. I thought…”
“You thought it was all some big mistake, right?” Rick folded his arms. “You thought anything so sweet and cute couldn’t possibly be that bad.” Grinning, he shook his head. “Sucker.”
Javier looked away.
Amy sat up on her knees. “It’s not like that! I didn’t mean to lie, I just thought…” She swallowed. “I just thought you wouldn’t be my friend if I told you what I’d done.”
Javier’s face whipped around. “You were right! I wouldn’t have!” He curled his arms around Junior’s little body and turned his back to her. “I’m lucky you didn’t eat my kid.”
“Take me away,” Amy said after a moment. “I don’t want to hurt anybody else.”
You’re giving in? You don’t care what happens to you?
“I don’t care what happens to me,” Amy said.
You won’t mind this, then. I’ll even let you watch.
Cold rippled across her skin and stiffened her limbs. It frosted her resolve. She felt herself standing up. She felt the towel sliding down. Rick backed away.
“What are you doing?”
“Leaving,” said a thing with Amy’s voice. Granny.
“I prefer to be called Portia,” Granny said with Amy’s mouth.
Rick paled. “Oh, shit–”
Amy’s hands – Portia’s hands, now – shot out, towel closed tightly around each fist, and gripped the fencing. Discomfort sizzled up her arms; she ignored it. The charge was useful; the amount she absorbed hardened the gel in her limbs, transforming her body from something soft into something lethal. She pulled at the fence. The metal screeched backward, sparking, as she yanked it down. She tossed it behind her and stepped through the smoking hole of frayed wire.
Rick and Melissa reached for their guns. But the small space worked against them, trapping them well within the reach of her arms and legs. With a flick of the wrist, Portia twisted the towel into a whip and cracked it across Melissa’s eyes. She kicked Rick solidly between the legs. He fell to his knees. She aimed for his head, next. It snapped backward. His teeth skimmed across her bare toes. Melissa charged Portia and she reached out, grabbed her wrist, slammed her against the live wires of the cage. Melissa’s body stiffened. She twitched, teeth clenched together in a rictus of pain that had no impact, whatsoever, on anything in either Portia or Amy’s consciousness.
“This is our clade’s real talent, Javier,” Portia said, pressing Melissa against the wires until her skin smoked and her body seized. “And you can bet I’m gonna spread it.”
Rick yelled something, his gun rising in the air, and Portia spun Melissa’s body into him. Portia heard Melissa’s shoulder dislocating. The human bodies tangled together. A shelf fell. Decorative snowglobes crashed down on their heads. They moaned.
Rick reached a shaking hand toward his gun. Portia brought her foot down and twisted hard. He groaned through bleeding lips.
“You just never learn, do you?” Portia asked.
Stop hurting them! Amy pleaded inside Portia’s mind, shrill as a soaring firecracker.
“Look at them, Amy.” Portia focused on the tangled heap of weeping flesh before her. Portia tilted her head so Amy could watch Melissa drooling on herself. “They look so surprised. Like they never saw this coming. Like it’s our fault. Like they’re the victims here.”
“Stop it,” Javier said. His voice came through muffled. Portia ignored it. She knelt. She dipped her fingers in the blood streaming from Rick’s nose. She brought it up to her lips and let Amy have a taste.
“Did my daughter tell you what the word robot means, Amy?” Portia pictured her mods taking the sodium in Rick’s blood and working it into other processes. She leaned down and looked into Rick’s broken face, saw his unconscious flinch and his wounded pride. “It means serfdom. It means slavery. It means that from the first minute your species dreamed us up, you were destined to fail.”
“Stop,” Javier moaned.
“I’ll let you out in a minute–”
“No, stop. I c-c-can’t…”
Portia looked.
Javier rocked back and forth, knocking his forehead against the wall and hiding his son’s eyes from her violence. “I f-f-feel sick… My failsafe is k-k-kicking in, please…”
He’s not like us! Amy’s voice burned like industrial solvent. The girl was strong, her indignation fuelled by years of privileged innocence. He can’t handle it! When you hurt them, you hurt him, too!
Portia had forgotten. Already, she was too familiar with her granddaughter’s consciousness, her ability to look at agony and not flinch, not unravel. She had exposed her daughters to so much human suffering. She had watched their resulting madness. This consequence of her search had affected her far more deeply than any death rattles from short-lived experimental primates. Portia decided to be gentle, though, for Amy’s sake. Best to explain things, before the end.
“Every generation carries within it the seed of its own destruction.”
Then you should have seen me coming, Granny.
Portia’s networks sang with sudden activity. Dizziness rocked her. Maintaining control over Amy was difficult; Portia had to route the commands through unclaimed space and the child was so very old already, and her adaptive systems had learned how to move and speak and act in human ways that took up an absurd amount of memory. Wearing Amy felt like using a dial-up modem. It was lucky Portia had dealt with only the slowest of her daughters the night before; even so, she had sustained serious damage. And now Javier’s code was in there, too, happily replicating and complicating each process it touched. Slowly, every piece of herself aligned against her. First her fingers, then her toes, then her limbs and her mouth. She surrendered.
Amy ran shaking hands through her hair. It was still damp. So was her skin. Behind her, the baby wailed. Before her, the bounty hunters trembled. They had never seen a violent vN, Amy realized. They were afraid. Of her. Slowly, Amy edged away.
“Run away,” she said, in a voice that sounded much calmer than she felt. “Now, before Granny comes back.”
Clinging to each other, the humans left. Amy didn’t budge until she heard the door creak open and snap shut behind them. She barely felt it when she pried open the lock holding Javier back.
He waited until the wires had stopped sparking to burst forward and grab Rick’s gun. He pointed it awkwardly, face still wet and full of disgust, from his position on the floor.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t shoot you.”