Perion Synthetics (3 page)

“And what is a PNR?”

“The Point of No Return, sometimes known as
the Deadline, indicates the radial operating limit of a synthetic. The
mountains provide a measure of security against anyone trying to take a
synthetic out of the PC, but the PNR assures no technology leaves without
Perion’s authorization.”

“Has a synthetic ever left the…” Cam paused;
there were so many initialisms. “The PC?” He laughed. “The Perion City?”

Sava shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.
All modern synthetics—we call them synnies—have proximity protocols to keep
them close to home. My sister likes to joke that when they rise up and kill us
all, at least they’ll only be able to wipe out a small radius of the state’s population.”

“Sounds like a smart woman.”

“Yeah, but once you spend some time with the
synthetics, you’ll understand they’re not a threat to us. The threat has always
been and will always be human, people who want to take the technology out of
the PC and use it for…”

Cam’s attention had drifted to the window
again, but Sava’s pause made him look back. “Use it for what?” he asked.

“For something unbefitting its intended
purpose,” she replied.

The car began to slow and Cam leaned forward
to get a better look. Ahead of them, the road narrowed as thick, evercrete
walls grew up beside it. The blacktop led to a brick of a building sitting
astride the road, its wide tunnel reminding Cam of a gaping mouth.

“You were expecting a little shack with one
of those traffic bars?” asked Sava.

Ominous warnings dotted the sides of the
road like long-forgotten campaign signs littering the landscape after an
election. They told stories of private property and reminded travelers of the
sovereignty laws giving Perion Synthetics the right to shoot trespassers on
sight.

The car pulled over about a hundred yards
away from the outpost. On the second floor, shadows moved behind the windows. The
driver shifted into park as six black-clad men stepped out from behind support
columns in the tunnel. Against their chests, their silver machine guns glinted.

On the other side of the plexiglass, the
driver made a silent phone call and waved through the windshield.

Cam noticed Sava tapping her foot. “Is there
a problem?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“Note,” said Cam. “Armed response appears to
be disciplined and formidable. One wonders if this is not perhaps an overly
dramatic response to the threat of corporate espionage.”

“You’re really going to feed that?”

Cam shrugged. “The only bad content is no
content.”

The driver rapped on the divider and gave a
thumbs-up sign.

“Come with me,” said Sava. “I want to show
you something.”

Outside, the mountains came right up to the
road, stopping the comforting breeze that had made the heat bearable. Cam
followed Sava towards the outpost; she stopped at a thick red line on the
blacktop and gestured to an evercrete barrier extending away from the road.
Beyond it, metal stakes grew like a row of crops from the cracked earth.

“Proximity beacons. They let the synthetics
and their handlers know when they’re getting too close. If you walked this
line, you’d see they circle the PC completely.”

Cam followed the line into the distance,
picking out the beacons with some intense squinting.

“Those are the primary measures,” said Sava.
She kicked at a patch of dirt beyond the edge of the road and revealed a dark
gray band extending from one beacon to the next. “Magnetic repulsers give the
synnies a sixth sense about the border. They’ll feel as if they’re being pushed
back.”

“Are they?”

“Not by much, and it wouldn’t stop them if
they really wanted to leave.”

“Do they want to?” asked Cam.

Sava smiled, but didn’t answer. She led Cam
back to the car and then waved to the outpost. One of the armed men approached
at a leisurely pace.

“Oh, you
shoot
them if they try to
escape.”

“Of course not,” said Sava. “These are
multi-million dollar synthetics we’re talking about, Mr. Gray. You don’t shoot
your product just because it wants to go off the reservation. Haven’t you ever
read
Your Life, Our Rules
?”

Cam vaguely remembered the self-help book
being in the bestsellers list a few years ago, but at the time, Dahlstrom
Academics had pulled their advertising from Banks Media and taken their two
million dollar account to Benny Coker, leaving Banks reluctant to feed any
coverage of what he called
new age garbage
.

“No,” replied Cam. “I think I have it on my
phone, though.”

“One of the primary tenets of social
engineering is to create within the target a genuine desire to do what
you
want them to do, and at the same time, make them believe it was
their
idea.”

The man stopped several feet away from the
red line in the road. He touched the tip of his black cap with his fingers, but
didn’t remove it. The bill cast a shadow over silver sunglasses. For a moment,
it appeared as if he were sneering, perhaps put out by having to step out into
the sun.

“How can I assist you, Ms. Kessler?” he
asked.

“Please come forward,” said Sava.

The man took a step; faint LEDs began to
flash on the beacons for fifty yards in both directions. On his second step, he
faltered and stumbled.

“Please,” prompted Sava. “Come closer.”

After another step, the man crumbled, as if
his knees had given out. Once on the ground, he began to push himself back
towards the outpost. He hadn’t made it anywhere near the red line.

“As you can see, any synthetic that
approaches the PNR will suffer exponential power loss. If he got a running
start and threw himself over the line, he’d lose power completely and wouldn’t
be able to drag himself back to safety.”

Cam felt his mouth hanging open. There had
been nothing in the man’s voice or behavior to suggest he was a synthetic, and
yet there he was, unable to stand, betrayed by the failsafes in his mechanical
body.

“You look surprised, Mr. Gray.”

The last image Cam had seen of a synthetic
replayed in his mind. It was years ago, part of some documentary about
replacing humans in dangerous environments. James Perion had garnered an entire
third of the broadcast with his ideas about synthetic firemen and astronauts.
He talked over video clips from his factories, dramatic sweeps down
never-ending assembly lines. There were robots hunched over conveyer belts,
ready to build the next generation of themselves. There were men in lab coats encircling
a completely exposed skeleton, adding and removing synthetic tendons to see
which ones worked best.

And while the synthetics they showed were
impressive, they were nothing compared to the machine slowly getting to its
feet in front of Cam. It was the equivalent of the technological chasm between
a Ford Model T and the electric Nissan that had brought them from Perion
Terminus—they were simply worlds apart.

“You guys have been keeping some secrets,”
said Cam.

“Absolutely,” said Sava, nodding. Her eyes
drifted to the right as if listening to a voice in her ear.

Cam wondered if she had a whisperer
installed after all.

Finally, she smiled and said, “We’re further
along than anyone can possibly imagine.”

Outpost Alpha was bigger than it looked from the outside, a
disparity Cam only fully understood after following Sava down two flights of
stairs to get to the processing room where they now stood. Two of the outpost’s
Automated Guards had escorted them down while two others brought up the rear.
Cam couldn’t stop looking at their faces; Sava’s earlier demonstration had left
him questioning who was real and who was synthetic.

“Mr. Cameron Gray?”

A technician in jeans and a white Perion
Synthetics polo had entered the room while Cam was busy counting the number of
blinks performed by each guard. Cam turned at the sound of his name.

“I’m Mr. Ferko,” said the tech. “I’ll be
performing your scan today.”

Cam turned to Sava. “My scan?”

“As I understand it, part of the agreement
between Mr. Banks and Mr. Perion was that an aggregator would be allowed into
the city provided that individual has no ties to Vinestead International or any
of their subsidiaries or partners.” Sava pointed to Cam’s sliver. “That
includes endotech.”

So Banks hadn’t been lying when he said
Frank Gattis couldn’t go.

Cam held up his wrist. “Katsumi Maximo
sliver, second generation. Backside, I’ve got a BSC iMerse jackport. It’s VNet
compatible, but it uses third-party transcoding, so no Vinestead IP.” Cam
tapped his earlobe. “I feed with a top of the line Banks Media Red Velvet
whisperer with full-duplex broadcast abilities.”

Sava nodded, unmoved. “What do you think,
Mr. Ferko? Should we just take his word for it?”

Ferko laughed the question away. “Don’t take
it personally, Mr. Gray. We scan everyone who comes through here. Even Ms.
Kessler will have her turn now that she’s been past the PNR.”

Sava shrugged and sat down on a couch
against the far wall. She pulled her phone from her pocket to check for
messages. “Now you see why I don’t leave the city too often? Waste of time.”
Her thumb moved in quick, upward swipes. “The White Line has been feeding this
cancer nonsense all morning. I guess Benny Coker’s finally found a leg to hump.
It still amazes me how ruthless you feeders can be.”

Nonsense? So she didn’t know…

Cam made a note to keep what he’d learned
from Banks to himself.

“Please remove your shoes,” said Ferko.

Cam stepped out of his stiff Mark Davids and
shook his head at Sava. “Don’t lump Banks Media in with Coker and crew. We’re nothing
like those Shore Dogs.”

“Ah, yes,” said Sava, still not looking up
from her phone. “Banks Media, the big BM, just the feed that comes to mind when
I think of honesty and integrity.”

Ferko guided Cam to the scanning chamber and
helped him inside.

“Someone hurt you, didn’t they?” asked Cam,
over Ferko’s shoulder.

Sava looked up, pursed her lips together,
and returned to her phone.

“Are you sure she’s not a synthetic?”

Ferko shrugged. “She’s been beyond the PNR,
so she can’t be.”

There was something in the tech’s voice. He
wasn’t exactly lying, but it was almost as if he didn’t believe what he was
saying.

“Now,” said Ferko, “all this machine does is
scan your endotech and query for any Vinestead technology. It should be able to
read the serial numbers and manufacturing codes from your endo without any kind
of discomfort. If you do start feeling woozy, there are handles on either side
of the chamber.”

Ferko took a step back as the glass
partition slid down from the ceiling.

“Are
you
a synthetic?” asked Cam.

“Thanks, but no thanks,” replied Ferko,
tapping on the monitor next to the chamber. “I like being able to take a walk
without worrying about my guts turning to goo.”

“I don’t follow,” said Cam, looking to Sava.

She stowed her phone in her pocket.
“Secondary proximity protocol. I was waiting for you to ask the question, but I
guess it didn’t occur to you that someone could transport a synthetic out of
here in some kind of vehicle.”

Cam imagined an armored car crashing through
the gates of the outpost, a synthetic’s lifeless arm hanging out of the back.

“Twenty yards beyond the PNR, a synthetic
will self-destruct.”

Laughter filled the scanning chamber as Cam
grabbed a nearby handle for support.

“There’s nothing really funny about it,” said
Ferko. He was nodding at the data scrolling on the vidscreen. “I’ve seen it
happen once. You’d think because it’s a synthetic it wouldn’t hit you so hard,
but it does. It’s like watching a small animal die, except it’s sort of human.
Imagine if Ms. Kessler’s insides liquefied into an acidic green sludge in under
thirty seconds.”

“So the line of beacons out there is more
like a pre-PNR?” asked Cam.

“The beacons are the company line,” said
Sava. “It’s what goes into the handbook for new employees. It’s what we teach
the synnies when they come off the assembly line. The existence and specifics
of the secondary protocol is knowledge limited to a subset of Perion employees
who should know better than to run their mouths about it in front of members of
the media.”

Ferko’s head shrunk into his shoulders.

“It’s alright,” Cam told the tech. “I won’t
use your name.”

“It’s Kris, if you do.”

“I’ve noticed you guys don’t use your first
names much.”

“Part of our corporate culture,” said Sava.
“Mr. Perion addresses everyone by honorific and last name and expects us to do
the same.”

“So the old man is a stickler for
formality?”

“The
old man
is a stickler for
respect, which you demonstrate a complete lack of by referring to him like
that.”

The glass partition rose abruptly; Cam took
a step back.

“All done,” said Ferko.

“Does he check out?” asked Sava, stepping
out of her shoes. She pushed them under the couch with her foot.

“He’s clean. Mr. Gray was telling the truth
for the most part.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked Cam.

Ferko pulled a palette from its dock and
handed it to Sava. “Nothing serious, just that he’s got a first generation
Katsumi sliver, not a second as our file denotes.”

Cam felt himself blush; he’d been telling
people he had a second gen Katsumi for years.

“Where’d you pull that data from?” he asked.

“You have your sources,” replied Sava, “we
have ours. Or so I thought.”

Cam nodded and took a seat on the couch. He
petted the imitation leather with his hand as he wiggled into a comfortable
position.