Christ, he was such a piece of shit. He shut his eyes and hugged the boy tighter and buried his nose in his curls. They smelled of seawater and oil and glue. Love hit him as hard as the failsafe, all at once. He wasn’t worthy of this kid. He wasn’t worthy of Amy, either. He didn’t deserve this island, this home, or any of it, not when he was being such a whiny little bitch about things. He would tell her that. He would apologize. He would do what he always did and come back, like a fucking boomerang, and he would beg forgiveness. He would ask about her iteration. He would stop making it be all about him.
“A generation ship is a starship,” the boy said. “I read about them.”
“A starship? Like for rich assholes?”
“No. For everybody. Well, humans. On a long trip.”
“What, like colonizing other planets, or some shit?”
The boy nodded against Javier’s arm. “They can’t do it, though. Because of the food. They can’t grow enough food.”
Javier considered. “Would printed meat help with that?”
“Maybe. But the meat starts making mistakes, after a while. It misprints, when you expose it to the kind of radiation you get in space. It gets sick.”
Cancer. Shit. The submarine.
Pastor Powell was waiting for him outside, when Javier left to make his amends. “We have to talk,” he said.
“Amy first.”
Powell shook his head. “It’s Amy we have to talk about.”
Javier kept walking. “She didn’t really hurt you. I was the one who overreacted–”
“Portia’s coming back.”
He pulled up short. In the bright light of day, it seemed impossible that they could be having this conversation. Inside the house, José and his parents were singing along to another one of their ancient recordings. The air was full of music. His children were laughing. The air was still and fragrant. Even the botflies looked happy, darting this way and that. He turned around.
“Why would you say that?” he asked.
“I recorded everything last night,” Powell said.
“You what?”
“Including the lions. I watched it over again. It’s Morse, Javier. They’re blinking in Morse. It’s so old you probably don’t know it, but it’s still effective.”
Javier shook his head. “No. You’re seeing things.”
“I’m not.” Powell held out a reader. On it, the lionesses sat in their circle, blinking. As they did, subtitles appeared beneath: S-O-O-N.
“That could mean anything,” Javier said. “Maybe Amy’s just testing something out.”
“Or maybe she quarantined her psychotic grandmother in those animals, and that’s why they attacked me,” Powell said. “Maybe she split Portia into a bunch of pieces, and they’re trying to come back together.”
“So what if they are? We buried that crazy bitch once; we can do it again.”
“Can you?” Powell stepped closer. “You saw what she was like, last night. She has no respect – no
empathy
– for human beings. She doesn’t care what happens to us, Javier.”
What was it Amy had said? That she didn’t need to wait for human approval? But that wasn’t the same as not caring. She had a human father, after all. Who she hadn’t seen in months. But Jack was still a meaningful connection to the human world. And she did fine with Tyler and Simone. She and the island did regular business with the seasteaders without any issues.
“Just because she doesn’t like you doesn’t make her a psychopath.”
“She tried to bury me alive last night.”
“I know. I remember. She thought you raped me.”
“But I didn’t, Javier. I could have, but I didn’t.”
There it was. Javier heard it in the little catch of Powell’s voice. That boyish little crack. He hadn’t fucked Javier, no. But he’d wanted to. He’d been on the cusp of it. Something had held him back.
“Well, gold star, preacherman. You didn’t failsafe me into fucking you.” Javier raised his hands and started clapping, slowly. “What a gentleman.”
Powell’s face went totally blank and slack. They were having a real argument, now. “She killed that puppet.”
“The puppet was never really alive. It wasn’t really a human being.”
“Would that have made a difference?”
Powell was up close to him, now. Javier could see the grey in the grizzle sprouting from his chin. He had good skin, tightly-curled eyelashes, a face that said it used to smile.
“You’re trying to sell me something,” Javier said. “What is it?”
“I can bring her back.” Powell withdrew something from his pocket. It was a bar of vN chocolate. A popular brand. “Amy has a flaw in her immune system,” he said. “She is what she eats.”
“I know that already.”
Powell nodded. “This is an add-on to the stemware. She will internalize it if she eats it.”
“What?”
“It’s an add-on,” Powell said, like that meant something. “It will modify her from the inside. She’ll be able to feel pain.”
Javier stepped away. “Pain?”
“Real pain. Organic pain. Like humans feel.” He tried to close the gap between the two of them. “You want to know why I’m really here? This is why. I’m here to give this to Amy. I’m here to poison her.”
Javier scowled. “And you’re telling me this
why?
”
“Because you’re the only one she trusts. You’re the only one who can give it to her.”
Javier stared at the bar. He was going to ask who Powell was working for, really, who had made this awful thing, and how it was coded or printed or whatever, but the question he settled on was: “Why would I want the woman I love to feel pain?”
Powell shut his eyes. He looked to be mastering himself, summoning patience from some interior reserve. “The pain isn’t constant. She’ll just react the way humans react.”
Javier arched one eyebrow in a way that he knew communicated deep skepticism. “So, she could failsafe me? If I saw this happen to her?”
Powell growled. “This is bigger than you and your pretend marriage!” He pulled something from his pocket. “Do you know what this is? Of course you don’t. It’s a Geiger counter. And the reason it’s making that noise is because this island is full of fissile material.”
Javier threw up his hands. “Oh, come
on
.” He started walking toward the house. “Now you’re just making shit up.”
“I’m not. The movement of these islands isn’t random, Javier. It never was. It maps over to the sites of sunken submarines, and sunken nukes.” Powell jogged to catch up to him, and unfolded his reader again. The map was there, in overlay. The dots scattered across it pulsed regularly. Red circles like bullseyes spread out from each of them. It all looked very menacing.
“You could have designed that,” Javier said. “You could have designed this whole thing as part of some fucked-up con job. You could be lying to me, right now.”
“But I’m
not
.” Powell positioned himself directly in front of Javier. “I’m not. She needs a check. She needs vulnerability. She’s playing out her own personal
Heart of Darkness
out here, and–”
“Her own
what?
”
“It’s a book. It’s about someone with a god complex.”
“And someone having actual godlike power offends your religious sensibilities. Of course. It’s cool when it happens in a book, but the moment someone actually walks on water, you freak the fuck out.” Javier kept walking. “I’m not doing this. In fact, I’m going home, and I’m going to tell Amy what you’re here to do. And then, your shit will be completely–”
“I’ll kill myself.”
Javier’s vision froze, then juddered. He turned. Pixels hovered at the edges of Pastor Powell’s body like a disintegrating halo. He had opened his shirt. Under it, strapped to his chest, was a variety of small bricks. They looked like feedstock. But they probably weren’t.
“It’s old-fashioned, but it’s still the best way to go,” Powell said.
Javier swallowed. Pixel dust floated away from Powell’s arms as he gestured. It spiralled away into the safe nowhere three feet away from Powell’s body. It looked like an old videogame: all lines and blocks. Like his visual receptors were frantically trying to render this moment into harmless fiction. Not real. Just pretend. Can’t hurt you.
He told his legs to jump away. He told them to pound up from the ground and take him into the breeze and the botflies. But his bones felt just as hollow as they really were, and he felt the smoke that made up his muscles wafting this way and that, twitching against the conflicting commands. It was as though someone else were inside him, taking over. This was how Amy had felt with Portia. He was sure of it.
Oh, God. Amy. He could tell her. He could jump. Jump, and run, right now, and tell her.
And she would kill Powell.
Vertigo ripped through him. He fell down. He wanted to claw his way into the black earth. Let it swallow him whole. Disappear forever.
“The timer is already set,” Powell said. “The moment I touched the wrapper with my bare hands, I signalled a satellite above us. In… forty-seven minutes, that satellite will broadcast a signal detonating these explosives, and I will die.”
Javier reached up. He lunged. Powell danced away, neatly, like a boxer.
“This wiring is very delicate, Javier. If you touch it, you have no idea what will happen.”
Christ. Shit, Christ, shit, fuck.
“I’m going to send my botfly with you, to monitor your progress. If you destroy it, I’ll trigger the vest. If you tell Amy what we're doing, I'll trigger the vest.”
Powell circled a finger in the air, and the machine peeped out from beneath his priestly collar and entered the air. It latched onto Javier and dug down beneath his shirt.
“Now, you can refuse me, and I can sit this out, and die. There's extra explosive up here," he sketched a necklace with one finger, "and it'll blow my head clean off. At least, it's supposed to. You and I both know how
unreliable
technology can be.”
Javier watched Powell’s eyes. They were perfectly calm. He was winning, and he knew it.
“I’ll suck your dick.” The words rolled off his tongue like they’d always been there. And in a way, they always had been. Powell wanted it. Javier knew that Powell wanted it. Everything else was just programming.
Powell rested a hand on his head, like he was petting a dog. His smile was bemused. “Son, you’d do that anyway, if I asked you to.”
His hand cupped Javier’s jaw. His hand was absurdly warm. Javier could feel the pulse of blood in it. Quick. Wanting. Powell's thumb pushed inside his mouth. Javier tasted nervous sweat. And just like that, the process inside him started to spin. Javier sucked helplessly at Powell's thumb. He knew exactly what to do to make this all better. He could interrupt this whole thing. Slow this down. He could do that with just his lips and his tongue. He knew how to do that. Had done just that very thing, in the past. In prison. It was just like riding a bike. You never really forgot.
His fingers made short work of Powell’s fly.
Powell himself was already halfway there. Of course. He hadn’t seen much action lately; Javier could tell from the way the other man’s hands tightened in his hair. How his hips jerked. How instantly his mouth was full. He tried to slow Powell down, tried to sweeten it, but Powell’s open palm came down on the side of his head and he grabbed Javier’s hair and jerked his head the way he wanted it to go. There was no finesse at all, just the raw slide of organic skin on silicone, the occasional dig of fingernails into Javier’s neck. If he were a human being of real flesh and bone, this would hurt. His throat would hurt. His eyes would well up. He’d get dizzy from not being able to breathe. But he wasn’t. Wasn’t a real live boy. Was a machine, instead. Was a toy.
He’d been with men and women who’d been raped. They wanted vN sometimes, after. To relearn their bodies. To relearn pleasure. Being with vN could awaken those sleeping memories in safety. They never described what happened to them in detail – it would failsafe him. But now he knew. Now he knew what happened when he covered his ears and closed his eyes. Now he knew the secret.
His tongue said Powell was carrying an infection of some kind. When he spat, Powell slapped him.
“You’re a fucking robot and you won’t even swallow? What are you,
broken
?” Powell’s voice shook. “Get going.”
“You son of a bitch,” Javier whispered. “You cowardly little piece of shit suicide-bomber
zealot
.”
“Plus ça change,”
Powell said, zipping himself back up. “I could explain it all to you. I could tell you my whole history. I could tell you that I’m atoning for something. Because I am, Javier. I’m atoning. I’m making something right.” Powell checked his watch. “But I don’t have the time to explain it, and neither do you.”
Powell held out the chocolate. “This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye.”
5:
You Can't Unring A Bell
He found Amy alone in their bedroom, plucking at something invisible in the dark. Her hands opened and he saw the submarine projected. It looked like an anatomical drawing. Or maybe a schematic. He thought about Xavier had said about generation ships. They sounded sort of mythical, like jetpacks or flying cars.
“It’s really a shame,” she said, without turning to face him. “They were really onto something, here. I know why they used meat – it’s harder to detect, and it surprised us – but the tissue could have been put to better use. I think it may be a prototype for something else. I think the whole invasion was the prototype for something else. Something bigger. I think there’s another reason for all of this.”
“I love you,” Javier said.
Amy turned, finally. She was wearing white again. She was wearing the torque. Unlike human women, her eyes did not turn red with crying. The skin under them didn’t puff up. But he could tell. He had learned how to tell.
“I love you, too.” She sounded careful. Cautious. As though the love itself wasn’t the point. Which it wasn’t.
“And I’m sorry,” he added. “I know you were just trying to protect me.”
Amy nodded. “I was.” Her lips pursed. “I was just so angry. And I was jealous, too. I’m not very proud of that. But…” The white line of her lips grew even thinner. “If he hurt you, you would tell me, wouldn’t you?”
Javier closed his eyes. “Of course I would.”
“OK.” Her arms closed around him. “This is why I don’t want to take advantage of you,” she said. “Do you understand, now, what it would mean if I took advantage of your failsafe like that?”
Oh, yes. Yes, he did. He understood it better than she could know.
He kissed the top of her head. He hugged her back. “I understand.”
She butted up under his chin like a cat. “Thank you.” She hugged him harder. “I don’t like being mad at you. I’m sorry I was.”
He squeezed his eyes shut. “It’s OK. You can get mad at me. I deserve it.”
“No, you don’t. You really don’t. We were both working our own protocols. They just happen to be different.”
Javier had spent most of his life being dishonest about one thing or another. He had stolen money from most of his lovers. He had lied to them about coming back. None of those lies – those small, petty, human lies – had prepared him for this one.
“I got you something,” he said. “It came in on the shipment.”
It would be OK, he told himself, as her slender fingers closed on the wrapper. She had pulsed him. Pulsed the whole island. For their own good. And this was for her own good, too. In a way. For their own good. Because Powell would leave. Powell would not do anything worse. And then they could figure something out. They could make it better. They could make sure she never got hurt. Ever.
“Thank you.” The wrapper rustled noisily as she tore it open. She snapped off a piece and held it out. “Would you like some?”
“That’s OK,” Javier said. “It’s for you, remember?”
“If you say so.” She popped it in her mouth and smiled.
Nothing happened.
“Are you OK?” Amy asked.
“Sure,” he heard himself say. “It was just a long night.”
She nodded. She sat down cross-legged on the bed. Then she made room for him, and he joined her. “You said something was strange about the lions,” she said.
Javier nodded. “I think they’re talking to each other. José told me to look into it. So I did, and they are.”
She still looked fine. Normal. She kept eating. She nodded to herself.
“That’s not good,” she said. “They’re part of the island’s default defence mechanism. So I can understand why they would attack a human being, but not why they would be spending time together. They’re supposed to watch the kids, not each other.”
“About that,” Javier said, “what exactly
is
the island’s default defence mechanism?”
She frowned. “You really want to know?”
He nodded.
“You’re not going to like it.” She put the poison down. “But I guess, since we’re being so honest, I should tell you.” She picked up his hand and stroked it. “It’s Portia,” she said.
Jesus. Powell was right. He tried withdrawing his hand, but she held it tight.
“Please don’t run away,” she said. “It’s not like how you think. It’s not
her
. Not her as an individual. More like her priorities. Her decision-making process. And it only engages when I’m not around.”
The simulations started branching before he was even conscious of them. “If you’re not around?”
Amy nodded. “Yeah. If something happens to me. Or if my focus shifts. If I can’t devote as much attention to the island, because I’m hurt. That’s why I keep my bandwidth to the island so constant. So I don’t upset the balance.” She squeezed his hand. “I know it doesn’t make me the easiest person to be with, but…”
Her hand began to shake. It started out as a faint tremor, the kind elderly humans sometimes had, almost imperceptible, like the movement of a second hand on a very old watch. Then it intensified. Became palsy. It shuddered through her little wrist and up into her arm, jogging her elbow up and down. Then it was in her shoulder, and she whimpered, and her grip on his hand was so hard he wanted to pull away but couldn’t.
“What’s happening to me?” she asked.
“I’m sorry.”
Amy’s eyes were wide. “Is Portia coming back? Is she doing this to me?”
He shook his head. “No.”
Her eyes lit on the wrapper. “You–”
She crumpled. The words died inside her mouth. Her face slammed into the bed like someone had pushed it there. She flipped onto her back. She bounced and seized and twisted. And through it all her eyes remained on Javier.
“I’m so sorry.” It was Powell, he wanted to say. Powell made me. Powell failsafed me. But when the change was done, she’d know, and she’d kill Powell.
“It’s pain,” he said. “It’s organic pain. It’s an add-on, to give you a sense of organic pain.”
Her spine arched in a terribly perfect half-circle. He tried to help her down and she screamed, an awful high shivery sound that seemed like it could shatter the diamond tree outside. Her heels drummed the bed and the bed roiled, bubbled, became hot and soft and viscous like tar. Something was happening to the house. The walls peeled down. The beams fell away. Sunlight shot through the shredded roof and her screams continued unabated, constant, breathless. And as she suffered his vision changed, went old-fashioned, entered failsafe. A thousand tiny pixels registered her agony for him, each pinprick of light burning its way down through him, imploring him to stop it, begging him the way her lips no longer could.
“I love you,” he was saying. He was holding her hand, still. He was clenching it. Hers curled around his. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”
The screaming stopped. His vision cleared. He looked down and she was staring at him. It was over. The pain was gone. They could figure it out, now. Move on to whatever came next. He would apologize and make it right. He would start with kissing her. He shut his eyes and bent down and she didn’t move, didn’t kiss back. When he pulled away and looked again, she was perfectly still. Eyes open, unseeing. Her hand was slack in his.
Amy was dead.
He touched her face. It rolled to one side. The breeze lifted her hair and rippled her dress. He let go of her hand and it dropped onto the bed, their bed, and began to sink into the gleaming black surface of it. The whole thing had lost its structural integrity, just like the house. Now she – her body, her shell – was sinking into it. Black goo seeped up around her face. It was at her lips before he moved, took her hand, tried to pull her free, but it was too late. Her body shifted in the muck. The weight differential changed. She was in quicksand. He tried to hold her hand, wrench her free, dig her out, but the island gulped her down. Her eyes were open. They were still open when she slipped beneath the surface. Her hair floated on it for a moment and then it too was gone. There was only black.
“Dad?”
Javier turned. Xavier stood there, watching him. When Javier stood up, he backed away. Javier raised his hands, palms open. Black mud dripped away from them.
Beneath their feet, the island shuddered.
“What did you do?” his youngest asked.
“I had to–”
His son’s fist in his stomach was terrifically strong. He doubled over. The kid kicked him in the face. He was barefoot, and that was the only reason Javier kept his teeth. Then his foot crashed into Javier’s ribs. He was little, but it didn’t matter. He was focused. He jumped up and landed on Javier’s shoulders. Javier collapsed onto the floor.
“I hate you!” his son was saying. “I hate you! You bastard, you killed my mother!”
In the crack in the house, a shadow appeared. It growled. Javier struggled to his feet, and easily grabbed his son’s next punch. He pushed it aside gently, and just as carefully pushed his son behind him as he backed away.
The lions had come for the kill.
“What’s happening?” his son whispered.
“Something really bad,” Javier said. “When I tell you, you jump out of here. Then you run. And you don’t stop. You find your brothers and you get the hell off this island.”
One by one, the lions hopped into the house. They congregated at the bed. They pawed delicately at its surface. Their tails flicked, as though they were considering something.
“Now,” Javier said.
His son jumped away. The lions noticed the movement, but didn’t chase after him. Instead, they focused on Javier. He braced himself. He curled his fists. But no attack came. Instead, one of their number padded up to him and slid herself under his hand and along his thigh.
Good work,
she seemed to be saying.
“You win,” Javier said. “Congratulations, you crazy old bitch.”
The lioness licked the mud from his hand.
The island was burning.
Javier jumped free of the house to follow his son, but a mist was already rising between their little home island and the big one. It made the jump difficult to estimate. That was fine. He’d walk. He set foot in the water. Too late, he realized there was no membrane to hold him up. The water closed over his head.
He saw the lions enter the water above him. He heard them before he saw them. Their bodies curved elegantly into the water and kicked briefly before orienting themselves. They paddled away toward the big island. He continued sinking. It was cold, down there. He had strong legs and he could have kicked up, but he didn’t. He had no need for air. He had no need for anything.
Beneath him, the island extended way, way down. It was black on black on black, with little glimmers here and there. It looked like a giant fungus, or maybe a massive brain, all that gelatinous mass occasionally sparking with life. The sparks grew more frequent the longer he sank. Trunk lines burned white like lines of traffic at night. Thick cords of light tangled, moved, changed shape. They unhitched themselves from the main body, flailing in the water, thrashing frantically while he remained still. He felt the island’s desperation as it changed. He felt none within himself. He should have been simulating what it was to crunch down into nothingness under the kind of pressure he was about to be under. He should have been trying to leave. He should have. He wasn’t.
It was comforting, almost, to revert back to the guy he’d always been. It was just too difficult for him to be anything else. A real father. A real husband. A real man. It was beyond his operational parameters, beyond his structural capacity. He wasn’t built for it. He saw that, now.
Before him, the island was an inverted city. Her roots hung deep in the water, thick as skyscrapers. They glittered and gleamed like structures of glass and steel. At any time, he realized, Amy could have shot them up from below and made a paradise to rival any human construction. They dangled there, all the unfinished places, the filigreed towers and great crude blocks, the hanging bridges of sighs never breathed. She had held them in reserve. She had let the islanders build what
they
wanted, instead.
Something cut into him from behind. A clean razor cut just beneath his skin, not painful, noticeable only by the way it tugged his shirt and caught his belt.
The diamond tree had fallen, too. That was fitting. It was heavier, and sinking faster. He freed it from his flesh, and he watched it sink, sparkling, into the depths.
A group of hands clasped it and pulled it lower.
He blinked and tried to see more clearly. But the hands had vanished. They were simply waiting, somewhere below, in the dark. He looked up. The unfinished city seemed closer, now. This close, he could see the decorations Amy had left each building. Some of them, at their crowns and gables, featured what might be gargoyles.
The gargoyles looked an awful lot like the puppet vN.
They were screaming. They were alive.
Something shook free from a dome in one tower. It punched and thrust its way out, piercing a shifting membrane, and slurped its way into the water. The submarine. It rocketed blindly up at Javier. A pore in its surface irised open. He kicked furiously. Tried to swim away. All the instincts washed away by the waves returned to him now, and he struggled in the water as though he were really drowning. But it was too late. He was sucked in. He was Jonah in the whale.
“What you have to know about humans is what they don’t know about themselves,” Arcadio says. “They’re machines, too. Humans are just machines. They run programs just like we do, they just run different ones.”
He is in the forest with his father. He likes the forest. He likes the many layers it has, all stacked up on each other like the things called “shipping containers” that Arcadio says, once upon a time, his clade stepped out of before leaping into the trees. Steel boxes a mile high, a secret inside each one. His clade came to the forest because it was made for the forest – for jumping and clinging. A-R-B-O-R-E-A-L. That was the English word. And like his father and grandfather before him, Javier loves it there – the way it is never silent, the way it is never lonely. He loves the speed with which the lizards skitter up the trees, and the gentle sway of crocodiles through the water. He loves the fizz of sunlight on his skin. And he loves the storms just as much when they sweep over the trees and make them whisper and moan.