Perion Synthetics (36 page)

“I thought we were going to see Synth J,”
said Joe.

Nico looked over his shoulder as they
walked. “We are. He’s waiting for you in the bunker.”

“But I just saw him up on seventy with
Governor Howard.”

“I don’t know his schedule,” said Nico. “All
I know is he asked me to bring you here so I did that.”

They turned a corner and came upon a large,
obsidian door. Two AGs stood guard on either side of it, their fingers extended
just above the triggers of their weapons. They scanned the hallway, waiting for
threats.

Nico touched the call button beside the door
and moments later, Synth J’s face appeared on the screen.

“Thank God you’re here,” he said, his
sentence punctuated by the buzzing of locks and sighing of pistons.

The black square swung inward, revealing an
expansive foyer that resembled an apartment complex lobby. Two walls held doors
with brass numbers; leather couches filled in the space between them. A bank of
vidscreens covered the third wall, each one showing a security feed from
somewhere in the building, including the driveway in front of the Spire and
Mom’s plaza in the back.

Synth J grabbed Joe’s shoulders as soon as
he stepped inside.

“My boy,” said the synthetic. “You’re
alright. I just heard about what happened in The Fringe yesterday. Are you sure
you weren’t hurt?”

Joe thought about the rhythmic ache pounding
in the back of his head. “I’m fine,” he replied. “Just a little bump.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this when it
happened?”

Because you already knew, thought Joe. He
tried to read the synthetic’s face, but there was no emotion to be found in the
lines of its artificial skin. “Gantz told me he filed a report.”

“Filed a
report
? Like it was some
minor fender bender? Someone tried to kill my son!” Synth J stepped away, put
his hand to the side of his face the way Dad used to do in moments of deep
concentration. He began to mutter quietly. “Yesterday… multiple agents… not all
detected.”

“What is this?” asked Joe. “Why are you
acting like you care about me? Do I even mean anything to you anymore or is all
this just programming?”

Synth J frowned. “I’m still in here, Joey.
Whether you want to believe it or not. We may have done things you don’t agree
with, but they were always for the good of the company.”

“You mean yourself.”

“Semantics, son. I
am
the company,
and so are you. Good for the company, good for us. But this…” He sat down on
the couch and covered his mouth with his hand. “This means someone is in our
house. They’re in and they’re in deep. They know our system, know how to
reprogram our synthetics. This is too complex for a drop-in Calle Cinco agent;
this can only be Vinestead’s doing.” He looked past Joe. “Nico, get me Chief
Gantz on the line. We need to call a strategy meeting. And bring down a dozen uniforms
for the main entryway.”

“I want to help,” said Joe. “If someone is
gunning for me, I want to find out why.” He tried not to stare too intently at
Synth J.

“Absolutely not. No, you stay here, where
it’s safe. I won’t have any more attempts on your life. This bunker has
everything you need for an extended stay and the synnies will keep anyone from
getting close to you.”

“Chief Gantz isn’t answering his phone, Mr.
Perion.”

“Then go find him,” barked Synth J. “How am
I supposed to protect my son without my chief of police? What about the
uniforms?”

“On their way,” said Nico. “I spoke to the
desk sergeant. He said he’s sending down their most reliable Scorpios.”

Joe scoffed. “Really? A synthetic tries to
kill me and your plan is to surround me with more?”

“Don’t worry about that,” said Synth J.
“There’s a world of difference between Scorpios and the Capricorn that attacked
you. The whole control paradigm was rewritten in the newer model. If Vinestead
figured out how to reprogram our Scorpios…” He trailed off, as if considering
the possibility for the first time. “Maybe it’s only a matter of
when
they learn how to reverse engineer Chuck’s architecture. They’ve already broken
the encryption on at least one model.”

Silence hung in the room as the circuits in
Synth J’s head heated up. His eyes scanned back and forth in rapid bursts while
his fingers dug into his cheeks.

“You’re worried they’ll be able to reprogram
you,” said Joe.

“No,” said Synth J. “V-Primes have no
networked connections. We’re missing all of the voice-actuated commands present
in the first Virgos.”

“Are you sure?”

Synth J considered the question for a
moment, and then walked quickly towards the door. He snapped at the AGs
standing guard. “No one goes in or out without my authorization. Come, Mr.
Shaw. We need to locate Chief Gantz and Dr. Bhenderu.”

“The doctor is working on the Paulson
project right now,” said Nico.

“Pull him off. Calle Cinco is the least of
our worries right now.”

“What about me?” asked Joe.

Synth J answered without breaking stride.
“You’ll stay here until I say it’s safe.”

“Fuck that,” said Joe, approaching the door.

An Automated Guard stepped forward and put
his hand on Joe’s chest.

“Take your hand off me,” said Joe.

“Please remain in this room, Mr. Perion.” Scorpios
weren’t built with the best voice enhancements; its words came out digitized
and menacing.

“Or what?” Joe pushed the AG’s hand away and
tried to leave.

A firm grip on his arm stopped him.

It didn’t hurt to have the synthetic’s
fingers wrapped around his bicep, but there was no struggling against it. The AG
held tight until the bunker door slammed shut. Behind the plexiglass, thick
metal cylinders extended into the evercrete doorframe. On the final click, the AG
released its grip. It took up position next to the door, checked the safety on
its gun, and then placed the weapon at rest by his leg.

“Asshole,” said Joe, rubbing his arm. He sat
down in the chair in front of the vidscreens and scanned the security feeds.

After an hour of watching random people come
and go, Joe grew restless and set about exploring his jail cell. As prisons
went, it had all the comforts he expected billionaires would receive when they
were caught insider trading or draining the pension funds of their employees.
Detention with class, thought Joe. Locked away from the world on a leather
couch with all the booze and entertainment anyone could want—a staycation with
only a hint of punishment.

Of the three doors in the foyer, only one opened
at Joe’s touch. Inside, he found a recently refreshed room, like a swanky hotel
suite waiting for its next guest. To the left of the king size bed was a small
table with three chairs. To the right, a dormant palette sat atop a desk of
metal and glass. At the foot of the bed was an area filled with a black
loveseat flanked on both sides by recliners. A seventy-inch vidscreen hung on
the wall in front of them.

The room resembled Joe’s apartment, just
condensed.

With his headache still pounding, he crawled
onto the bed and sank into the welcoming mattress. He grabbed the remote and
tuned the vidscreen to the media feeds. While they loaded, he stared at the
faces of each house: Donato Banks, Lincoln Tate, and Benny Coker.

Joe selected Lincoln’s brooding face and
waited for the audio.

“…a Friday marred by protests in southern
cities at the perceived aggression by the MX government. At issue are recent allegations
into the MX’ funding of drug cartels along the border, who over the last
decade, have significantly devalued U.S. property.”

Joe had been to Mexico once as a child. He
recalled it being very dark, without the light pollution so prevalent in Perion
City or Los Angeles. There, the unobscured stars twinkled in the sky above the
vacation home his father jokingly referred to as a cabin. The boundlessness of
the universe captured Joe’s interest, and he spent many nights staring into the
black dome.

Later, those twinkling stars were replaced
by the flashing neons of Perion City at night, as seen from high in the Spire.
Joe recalled Dad sitting in his office long after sunset, a stack of papers on
his desk but his attention turned to the bustling city around him.

“We never stop,” he would often tell the
little boy in his pajamas standing just inside the door. “At any given moment,
there are a hundred or a million people out there working for the same dreams
you’re working for, trying to accomplish the same goals. And the difference
between us and them, Joey, is that
we never stop
. Each one of those
lights out there represents a member of the competition. They’re working while
others sleep. And so must you.”

And then the titan would turn to his son and
say, “There will come a time when you have to make a choice, have to take a
step. If you find yourself unprepared, there are only two things you have to
remember. The first is that I will always love you and always be proud of you.
The second is what your mother tells you every night before bed. Do you
remember, Joey?”

Joe’s daydream turned to images of his
mother, blurred by the many years, but full of warmth and familiarity. He saw
her moving about his childhood room, picking up the remaining toys he had left
scattered on the floor. And when the last of the Legos and G.I. Joes had been
put in their bins, she came and sat on the edge of his bed. The Smurfs lamp on
the nightstand cast a blue glow on her smile and Joe felt her presence provided
more safety than any bunker in the world.

Her lips moved, but the words were all
wrong, not quite soft enough and tinged with an English accent.

“Vinestead stock rose again today on
speculation its PMC division could be called upon by President Hadden to secure
our southern border. Many democrats are calling this back alley favors, citing
the President’s push ten years ago for the controversial GA bill, which was
introduced by the then-governor of Massachusetts. Speaking from the Rose Garden
today, the President challenged his critics to suggest a better plan for
keeping immigrants from becoming burdens on the backs of hard-working
Americans. A statement released by Calle Cinco today calls the President’s
remarks irresponsible and racist. No threat of terrorism was made with the
statement.”

Joe turned the vidscreen off and rolled onto his back.

In the darkness behind his closed eyes, he
thought of his mother and what words of salvation she might have said to him so
many years ago.

The small studio apartment over the W.G. Walter Spiritual
Center wasn’t much, but it was a home to Dr. David Yates, who had run the WG for
the better part of a decade. Unlike other professions, the role of spiritual
advisor was a twenty-four hour job, with services running from daybreak to
sunset and walk-in meetings available day or night. Not that many ever took
advantage. The ones and twos of the weekly congregations swelled to half a
dozen on the weekends, but never more than that. It took a national tragedy to
swell the ranks of the congregation, or perhaps just the rumor of an old man
fading before dawn.

Yates thought about the strange week
following the Synthetic Collapse as he lay awake in his twin bed, staring at
the accumulation of light rain on his window, the drops of water warping the
blue Southpoint Synthetics sign next door. Every once in a while, the blue
flared to white as lightning reached out from the clouds. There was no thunder
though, no distant rumbling to make Yates wonder what terrible pestilence might
be lingering just beyond the horizon, inching and oozing its way towards Perion
City. All week, the air had been full of potential, charged with some hint of a
calamity ready to spill into this world. The clouds could burst or the earth
might open up, but
something
was going to happen.

The people of Perion City sensed it; they
came in droves to the weekday services. At Sunday’s evening mass, two dozen of
the city’s newly faithful had to stand near the open doors, some even gathering
outside to peer over the heads of others. James Perion likely never imagined so
many people would need the Lord’s words, not in a city of the scientific and
pragmatic.

On the desk by the opalescent window, the
day’s log lay open to Sunday, November 15.

Evening Mass: 112 attendees.

That was one hundred and twelve worried
faces trying to smile as they offered each other a sign of peace, two hundred
and twenty-four doubting eyes looking to Yates for reassurance.

And though he had recited the passages and
delivered the soothing words of the Gospel, he was not completely convinced of
their impact. These convenient Catholics may have knelt before the Lord, but
did His word truly mean anything to them? These were men and women of science
and math—mere platitudes would not sway them. How could Yates convince them of
a greater plan if they had always approached sky-gods as myths, and had never
once seen any proof, any sign to suggest otherwise? If they were not ready to
accept His word, why did they so eagerly fill His house?

Yates had just rolled over for the hundredth
time when a soft knock came at the door of his apartment. Through the fabric
partition between the living room and the bedroom, he could see green light
seeping in beneath the door.

“Yes?” he asked.

“There is a man downstairs,” said Truman,
the Center’s resident synthetic altar boy and custodian.

“Someone broke in?” asked Yates, grabbing an
undershirt he had left draped over the footboard. “Did you notify the police?”

“No, Father. He
is
the police.”

Yates touched the light switch in the foyer
and retracted the deadbolts in the door. He pulled on a night robe decorated
with Catholic imagery before turning the handle. In the hallway, the glow from
the running lights lit Truman’s face from below.