Perion Synthetics (15 page)

“Mrs. Paulson, how are you feeling today?”
He took the palette from Suzanne and looked over his glasses at the screen. “I
was relieved to hear of your improvement, though I never doubted you would pull
through.”

“What happened?” asked Cyn. Sitting up had
shifted her weight, putting pressure on bruises she felt but couldn’t see.

“A bit of misfortune, but that’s not
important right now. What
is
important is that you are feeling better.
We are all very—”

“Just tell me what happened,” snapped Cyn.

The anger had come from deep down, below the
emptiness and the fleeting feeling that perhaps this was all a dream. It felt
so different, so far removed from what she thought her life was. The sterile
walls, almost blinding in their whiteness, didn’t belong to the aging rooms at
Sutter General in Sacramento or the free clinics in Ember.

The gears caught, stuttering on the word.
Was that right? Ember?

Cyn shook her head.

“You were in a car accident.” A black suit
darkened the doorway for a moment before stepping into the room. “T-boned by a
dump truck making a haul out to The Fringe. The driver was on some kind of
synth, so we’ve got him locked up until we find out what it is and where he got
it.”

The Fringe, thought Cyn. It meant the
outskirts of Perion City, an industrial zone tasked with the…

The feed petered out.

“Chief Gantz, please. This is not the proper
way to talk to someone after they’ve experienced a serious trauma.”

“It’s fine, Doctor,” said the square-jawed
man. “She asked for the truth; beating around the bush wasn’t going to do
anything except freak her out.” He came closer to the bed but stopped a
respectful distance away. “Chief Robert Gantz, Perion City Police Department. I
was one of the first responders to your… accident.”

His subsequent smile set off an alarm in the
back of Cyn’s head. At least her bullshit detector was still going strong.

“Fortunately for us,” said Dr. Bhenderu,
“the safety systems in your vehicle performed valiantly. With the exception of
some bruising, you escaped without major injury. No broken bones, no
lacerations. The only concern we had was for your head. You suffered a nasty
bump.”

“How long have I been out?”

“About eighteen hours. We were keeping you
sedated until the swelling went down. We shouldn’t see any long-term effects,
but you may experience some temporary mental fragmentation as a result of the
concussion.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Again, the
anger surged. Cyn found herself unable to contain it, as if frustration were
some orphaned thread running in the background, ready and waiting for the right
memory allocation to come—

A spike tore through Cyn’s temple, crossing
behind her right eye. She put her free hand up to stop the stinging.

“Are you alright?” asked the doctor. “I’ve
got you on synthetic regulators for now, but I can up the baseline if you’re
feeling any discomfort.”

This wasn’t discomfort; beyond the pain
there was something more, some gaping emptiness.

“Mrs. Paulson, do you remember anything
about the accident?” Gantz leaned against a counter on the far wall and buried
his hands in his pockets. “Anything at all?”

Cyn tried to piece the memory together, but
there was simply nothing there. The file had been deleted, the pointer
overwritten with garbage.

“I don’t remember… anything.”

Her memory felt dull, out of focus, as if
she couldn’t pinpoint a single moment in her life before waking up in the
hospital.

“Mental fragmentation,” she whispered.

“It happens sometimes,” said Gantz. “Nothing
to be ashamed of.”

Cyn shot him a look, asking who the hell
said she was ashamed of anything.

“And nothing to be worried about at this
stage,” said Dr. Bhenderu. “It is almost always temporary. You should start
remembering things soon and have total recall within two or three days. Going
home will help immensely, but I wouldn’t recommend returning to work for several
days.”

“Home?”

Home—a twin bed shoved carelessly into the
corner, sea green sheets pulled back, waiting for her.

Gantz pulled out his phone. “2011 Westbrook,
apartment 4D, out by the Drafthouse?”

Cyn shook her head at the chief. There was
something odd about him.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“Excuse me?” He drew himself up as he
pocketed the phone.

“You heard me. Am I under arrest or
something?” There was a lingering feeling of guilt circling Cyn’s chest—she had
done something wrong recently.

“I just thought you’d want to see a friendly
face,” he replied.

Cyn turned to the doctor. “Is my health so
meaningless you’d have the cops here to interrogate me as soon as I wake up? I
know my rights. If this is a formal questioning then I want my lawyer present.”

If I
have
a lawyer, she thought.

Gantz crossed his arms and smirked.

“Please, Mrs. Paulson,” said Dr. Bhenderu,
“allow me to apologize. There are…
other
… circumstances that require
Chief Gantz to be here. With head trauma, there are no hard and fast rules
about recovery time. If you were found to be unfit—”

“Unfit? What the hell does that mean?”

Dr. Bhenderu put up a hand. “You were not
the only one in your vehicle when you were struck yesterday.”

Cyn’s stomach flipped, gave her the same
feeling as reaching out for a step that wasn’t there. She thought of her
family, of a mother whose face moved behind the curtains and a father who
stayed in the distance, beyond the power of her mechanically enhanced vision.

That last part didn’t sound right to her.
She narrowed her eyes at a sign in the hallway, but it was too blurry to read.

“Who?” Cyn coughed in response to her
suddenly dry mouth.

You know who
. It was not a voice that
spoke, but rather a feeling, a perennial directive that had always been there.

“I’ll get the lady,” said Gantz, jumping at the
opportunity to leave the room.

“First, you should know she’s perfectly
alright. She’s been under close supervision since your arrival.”

She
, thought Cyn. So her passenger
had been a woman.

“Who is she?”

Dr. Bhenderu hesitated. “Your daughter, Mrs.
Paulson. Your baby girl is just fine.”

An unseen boot slammed into Cyn’s chest and
held there, preventing her from taking another breath. She wanted to question
the doctor, wanted to ask how and by whom, but the words would not come out.
She stared at his cold, brown eyes, speechless, unable to comprehend anything
anymore.

The directive stepped forward to fill the
silence.

It told her to look to the door, at the
woman in slacks and a frilly red shirt. She carried a bundle of blue blankets
in her arms.

Cyn didn’t need to ask what the bundle was;
the way the woman held it was answer enough.

“Cynthia?” asked the woman.

A nod was all Cyn could muster.

“Someone has been asking for you.”

Then the woman was moving across the room,
bringing the bundle closer and closer. Time slowed as she set the baby in Cyn’s
arms, which had opened automatically.

Candice Marie Paulson.

They would call her Candy throughout high
school, until she was able to break free from her assigned nickname and choose
something for herself. Maybe it’d be the seven letters from her birth
certificate, maybe it would be something silly like C-dice or simply C.
Whatever her handle, it would never be as perfect as the one Cyn had chosen
moments after delivering a healthy baby girl, just as the nurse was laying the
screaming angel in her arms.

“Tangential to the primary issue is the
application of force feedback as it pertains to pleasurable experiences for the
user. If synthetics are limited by a directive to do no harm, then any exertion
of effort in regards to rough play will be seen as a contradiction to that
directive, leaving them inert and no better than inanimate devices.”

The nurse attending to the talkative man
nodded as if she understood or cared about the babble that had been coming out
of his mouth all afternoon. Cyn was surprised her insurance wouldn’t cover a
private room; instead, they had wheeled the deranged man in around noon with
assurances he was harmless but suffering from a bad ticker. The room was
designed for two–a track for a curtain bisected it–but Cyn still felt like the
man was intruding.

On the wall between the two beds hung a
vidscreen that scrolled through a playlist of urban vistas, most of them of
Perion City, landscapes as they appeared from the revered upper floors of the
Perion Spire.

At the end of the loop, the manufactured
images gave way to a live feed for a few minutes, showing a failing sun over a
subdued city. The foreground detail was enough such that Cyn could see
corporate banners hung from every surface, from makeshift pikes on the eaves of
buildings, to the railings of balconies, and on proper flagpoles in small
parks. Corporate patriotism was at an all-time high; Cyn couldn’t remember ever
seeing the place so made up.

Couldn’t remember…

Candice was asleep, so when the nurse
wandered over to check on them, Cyn asked in a hushed voice, “What’s with all
the flags?”

“They’ve been like that since Tuesday.” She
grabbed Cyn’s free hand to check her pulse, but it felt like she was going to
deliver some bad news. “Everyone’s been really worried about what it means for
the company. They’re saying it was a one-time glitch, but some of the engineers
I know aren’t so sure. Morale has been pretty low since then.”

Cyn nodded, felt Candice stir in her arms.
Staring down into her daughter’s face made the nurse’s words fade into
irrelevance.

“The bones have to be as strong as they are
pliant. They have to support the weight of the structure but not be more than
the average man can carry or push around in the sack. The systems supporting
this structure have to be equally light and resilient. Do you think this
technology comes cheap, not only from a financial standpoint, but from the
sacrifice our young men have had to make to ensure we found the right balance?
Young men with their entire lives ahead of them confined to wheelchairs for
months because of a shattered pelvis. And they have the nerve to call
me
reckless!”

“Please, Mr. Sayre, you need to keep your
voice down. You don’t want to have another episode.”

“Episode? Is that what they teach you
assembly line graduates to call cardiac arrest? My
heart
stopped
beating! And whose fault is that? Mine? A Georgia chip would have kept me on my
feet, instead of shitting my pants at the commissary. But no, the big man won’t
allow it. I can’t even say the V-word in here without risking a pink slip.
Imagine that–fired for saying a name. This is a massive company we’re talking
about here, not some scared-of-its-own-shadow startup hoping its patent
violations go unnoticed.”

“If you don’t calm down, I’ll notify the doctor
and he’ll just give you another sedative.”

“Are you threatening me, Ms. Medco 5000? You
wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me. I’m done with you. You find me a
real
nurse right now!”

The nurse rolled her eyes at Cyn and smiled.
“Sorry about him.”

“Don’t apologize for me. You have no right!”

“Hey,” snapped Cyn. She whispered as loudly
as she dared. “Shut the hell up. My daughter is trying to sleep.”

“Well excuse the hell out of me,” said
Sayre. “I didn’t know your
daughter
was asleep. Please give your
daughter
my deepest apologies. I wouldn’t want to do anything to interrupt
her
precious little dreams.”

“Nurse, hold my baby.”

The nurse didn’t have time to protest; she
was still adjusting to the added weight in her arms as Cyn crossed the room.

Sayre’s eyes widened as Cyn grabbed the
front of his hospital gown.

“Look, asshole, if you say one more goddamn
thing about my daughter, I’m going to rip your chest open and pull out your
black fucking heart and squeeze it until every drop of blood squirts out onto
your ridiculous fucking mustache! You let her sleep, or so help me, I will put
you
to sleep!”

Then an orderly was pushing her away as a
team of nurses streamed into the room. Cyn unfocused and became aware of a
grating alarm coming from the wall where a red light flashed its warning.
Sayre’s heart rate had spiked and the terror she saw in his face was not his
fear of her, but of the tightness gripping his chest. In less than thirty
seconds, the team had disconnected him from the monitors and wheeled him out of
the room. As the bed rolled past the doorway, the alarms quieted.

Candice began to cry.

Cyn retrieved her from the nurse and looked
down at the puffy cheeks and toothless gums. Goddamn Sayre and his rambling.

“Ssh,” she said, rocking her baby back and
forth.

“Someone’s back to her old form, I see.”

Dr. Bhenderu stood in the doorway, a curious
smile on his face and a few drops of coffee on his otherwise white lab coat.

“It wasn’t my fault,” said Cyn.

“I don’t presume to know the depths of the
maternal instinct, so I certainly can’t pass judgment on you. It’s amazing what
a mother will do when she cares very deeply for her child. It is admirable.”

“I’d give my life for her,” she said. “She
is the most wonderful thing I’ve ever made.”

Candice gave another cry and shook her tiny
fists.

“I need a bottle for her.”

Dr. Bhenderu nodded. “Of course. Perhaps
you’d like to take her to the atrium? Get out of the room for a little bit? I
will have the nurse bring Candice a bottle.” He stepped aside and extended a
hand towards the hallway.