Perion Synthetics (42 page)

“Is that so? Can he design synthetics? Can
he build one himself?” Holmes shook his head. “Perion may have been a
visionary, but it took real people to make his vision come true. And right now
those people are dying in the streets like animals.”

“Thirty-eight deaths is hardly a slaughter.”

Holmes smacked the bar with his palm. “
One
is too fucking many! You know that.”

Gantz shut his eyes and tried to tune out
the world.

In the grand scheme, were the deaths of thirty-eight
people enough to put the safety of Joseph Perion at risk? Gantz shook his head.
Holmes could usually be counted on for good advice, but in this matter, he just
wasn’t seeing the bigger picture.

Opening his eyes, Gantz looked to the
ceiling again. “What would you have me do? I’m one man against an entire army
of synthetics.”

“Seems simple to me,” said Holmes, finishing
off his drink. “You even the odds.”

“Kill a hundred and fifty thousand
synthetics? You got a nuclear warhead back there under the boxes of stale pretzels?”

“Don’t be simple, Bob. Someone is telling
those synnies what to do.”

“Yeah, but we don’t know
how
.”

Holmes frowned and slapped the vidscreen. He
flipped through the channels until the Spire appeared. “Really? Look at that.
Look at all of those dishes on top of that thing. And you say you don’t know
how the orders are reaching all the synnies? The Spire is one big antenna.”

“Those are for satellite uplinks,” said Joe,
from the entryway. “There’s some localized broadcast stuff up there, but nothing
capable of sending out a mind-control ray. The synnies have an open connection
back to the hub, but it’s for software upgrades only.”

“And what about the PNR?” asked Holmes.

“What about it?”

“How do the synthetics receive
that
signal if they only have one connection open?”

Joe sat up and swung his feet to the floor.
He looked across the bar at Holmes. “What are you talking about? The PNR is a
line in the sand.”

“The hell it is. It’s a signal and I can
prove it.” From his pocket, Holmes produced a small plastic square and placed
it on the bar.

“What is that?” asked Gantz. “And what time
machine did you use to go back and get it?”

Holmes tapped the smooth skin on his wrist.
“It’s what we had before slivers. This thing pulls radio signals out of the air.”

“Do go on,” said Gantz.

Joe stood and limped to the bar.

“See for yourself. Turn it on, tune to a
station, and walk back to the PNR. As soon as you cross that line, the
interference makes listening impossible. And the signal gets stronger the further
into the city you go.”

“You never mentioned this before,” said
Gantz.

Holmes shrugged. “Like I said, no one asks
the bartender anything.”

Gantz turned to Joe as he pulled up a
barstool. “That’s not how it works, is it?”

“That’s not how it was explained to me,”
replied Joe, “but then Dad didn’t always care to know exactly how something
worked, only that it did.”

“So that would make the PNR not a fence but
a leash?”

Joe folded his hands under his chin. “An
electric fence will keep people in or out, so long as there’s power. The PNR
circles the entire city. That’s a long chain with a ton of individual links.”

Holmes nodded along as if this were all old
news to him.

“I see,” said Gantz. He stood as if to
leave. Laughing, he wagged his finger at Holmes. “I see what you did there.”

“What did he do?” asked Joe.

“It’s sneaky, but I wouldn’t expect anything
less from you, Holmes.” Then to Joe, “It’s a double-edged sword.”

“
What
is?”

“The idea of more signals. You say there’s
only one signal and that it’s for upgrades. Holmes says there’s another to keep
the cattle on the ranch. If we accept that idea and open the number of
connections to two, there’s no reason there can’t be three or four or forty.
Then you say, well, the signal turning all of the synthetics into zombies is
coming from the Spire. So what is the only course of action?”

Joe spread his hands.

“Tell him, barkeep.”

Holmes backed away and leaned against the
sink. “Smash the grid. Stop the signal.”

“Of course,” said Gantz. “So that means we
head
back
into the city and not just to any old place, but the goddamn
Spire. I flash my badge at the door and we take a nice elevator ride up to the
comm room. I’m sure there’s a little hacker sitting at a keyboard up there
telling all of the synthetics what to do. And in the name of the former Chief
of Police of the City of Perion, I’ll command him to cease and desist. Bob’s
your fucking uncle and we all live happily ever after.”

“Maybe I should cut you off,” said Holmes,
reaching for Gantz’ beer.

Gantz turned to Joe. “If we run in there
with guns blazing, something or someone is going to get blown to hell. Maybe we
shut down enough equipment to kill the signal, but then guess what happens.”

Joe’s mouth fell open. “If we kill the PNR
signal…”

“Yeah,” said Gantz. “A hundred and fifty
thousand synthetics take an acid bath. Billions of dollars in experimental
product and prototypes are incinerated at once.”

“It would set us back a decade,” said Joe.
“It would put the entire city out of work.”

“At least they’d be alive.” Holmes slung a
towel over his shoulder and crossed his arms. “You two knuckleheads are
forgetting the value of human life.”

“I think you’ve lived too long on this side
of the PNR,” said Gantz. “You forget why we’re all here.”

“You got that backwards, Chief.”

“Fuck you, Holmes. The company
must
survive!”

“Gantz,” said Joe.

His voice was too calm. Gantz tried to
steady his breathing, but all he wanted to do was jump the counter and pummel
some sense into Holmes’ head.

“What?”

Joe stood and put a hand on Gantz’ shoulder.
“Is Perion Synthetics my company?”

“Yes, but…”

“So if I’m in charge, then I can do whatever
I want with it, right?”

“Your father wouldn’t have wanted this. He
never would have thrown everything away.”

“He doesn’t have to throw everything away,”
said Cyn.

Gantz turned to the aggregator; she had a
towel pressed to her damp hair.

“Great,” said Gantz. “Now the Umbrat has an
opinion. Tell us, what plan of action has the augmented princess decided is
best?”

“I would say it’s obvious,” she replied,
“but that word means different things to you and me.”

Gantz took a step forward; Joe slapped him
in the chest.

“Holmes is right though,” continued Cyn. “We
have to stop the signal. And that may mean we cripple the Spire’s comm
equipment.”

“Thus killing everything synthetic in the
city,” said Gantz.

“No, we set them free.”

Gantz tried to relate the word
free
to synthetics.

“Assuming it’s even possible, how do you
suppose we do that?” asked Joe.

Cyn eyed the vidscreen as it scrolled
between the various feeds.

“You think Perion is the only one who can
broadcast a signal?”

It was past ten before they finally got back on the road.

Joe was behind the wheel of Holmes’ ancient
beater whose black paint had turned to rust over the many years. The Civic only
had a fraction of the horsepower of Joe’s GT-R, but at least its engine block
wasn’t completely melted by synthetic offal. The windshield, though splintered
in a few places, kept the wind at bay as they cruised Loop Six at a strenuous
seventy miles per hour. Having control of the vehicle put Joe at ease; maybe he
thought that at any moment, he could whip the Civic around and head back to
Pure or out to some other remote part of the city.

For now, the PNR still provided a measure of
safety, but if they were able to pull off the plan they had so intricately laid
out on a paper tablecloth, then that neutral zone, that home base of
oh-no-you-can’t-touch-me
would go away in an instant.

Then Joe Perion would not be safe anywhere,
and neither would the rest of the world.

Cyn had claimed the back seat for herself
and used the extra room to stretch her legs. In her lap, she fiddled with the
shotgun she had taken from Holmes. He had been reluctant to part with it,
especially considering the potential tidal wave of synthetics that might be
walking out of Perion City if things went right, but after some sweet-talking
by Cyn and a recollection of a scoped rifle hanging over his bed, Holmes had handed
it over without further protest. Now, Cyn’s pockets bulged with extra shells.
The smile on her face came and went; whatever dialogue she had going on in her
head was waffling between the good and the bad to come.

The closer they got to the city, the more
Gantz tried to convince himself this was a good idea. His questions to the man
upstairs had gone unanswered for the better part of the night, but there did
come a moment when Gantz saw the totality of Perion City’s population as one
great oil painting, showing them marching into the streets only to be gunned
down by stone-faced synthetics. There was no telling how far Kessler would push
or how long she would keep the synthetics in the streets with no payoff before
ordering them into warehouses and businesses.

And eventually, homes.

Protecting Joe was his job, but saving an
entire city felt like true purpose.

Though Gantz knew God had not phoned him up
and told him to fight against Kessler, he did not reject the possibility that
through his own introspection, he had been helped to the path by divine
intervention. Some force out there had set him on the road leading them back
into the city, speeding along the side streets under pockets of orange light,
ever pushing towards the white spike someone had buried upside down in the
ground.

Are you coming with us, Gin-slinger?

Holmes hadn’t even answered, had instead
thrown his towel on the counter and walked away, turning off the Blue Moon beer
sign as he went.

“He would have just slowed us down,” said
Cyn.

“It’s not that,” replied Gantz.

Joe gave him a glance. “He can take care of
himself. He agreed with the plan.”

Gantz wanted to reply it wasn’t so much the
plan that was the problem; on paper, it made perfect sense and there had been
an ease with which Cyn enumerated the various stages, but back here in the real
world, it still had to be executed to perfection. Gantz would have to fire
true, Cyn would have to push the limits of her various augments, and Joe would
simply have to stay alive long enough to pick up the pieces of his father’s
ruined empire. If all went to plan, someone was sure to get hurt.

If all went to plan…

Gantz watched the streets scroll by.

“No synthetics,” he said. “Slow it down,
Joe.”

The Civic lost speed, removing the blur from
the front windows of the buildings they passed. Ever since setting out from
Pure, Gantz had been expecting to run into a wall of synthetics at some point,
but the streets had remained empty.

Gantz narrowed his eyes to see better in the
dim light.

Shadows moved between the buildings—people
hunched over as they moved from cover to cover, trying to avoid the halogen
beams of Holmes’ car. The human population of Perion City was still there,
still venturing out despite the graphics on the public displays announcing a
curfew in menacing red letters.

As the Spire loomed, Joe cut the headlights
and used the ambient lighting to see. He slowed them down to parking lot speeds
for fear for hitting a resident darting across the darkened street.

In the back seat, Cyn chuckled.

“Care to fill us in?” asked Gantz.

Cyn ran her finger down the barrel of the
shotgun. “The Siege of The Perion Spire,” she replied, “like it’s some kind of
run and gun. There are some augs I know who would give their left tit for this
kind of action.” She tapped her wrist. “If I could broadcast what we’re about
to do, it’d put Lincoln Continental on top for good.”

Joe raised an eyebrow.

“Aggregators,” said Gantz. “Always looking
for a story. Can’t even take ‘em to bed without a play by play showing up on
the feed the next morning.”

“A night with Robert Gantz,” said Cyn. “I
took off my clothes. He blew his load in his pants. Later, breakfast.”

“You’re hardly my type, princess,” he
replied.

“Oh, I know,” said Cyn, drawing out the
word.

The Civic paused at a stop sign.

“Where to?” asked Joe.

Cyn leaned forward between the two front
seats. “Stage one, we storm the castle.”

“You mean, storm a castle guarded by a
contingent of synthetic soldiers of unknown size or distribution,” said Gantz.

“Alright, stage one, assess the defenses.”

“There’s a helipad on the roof of Southpoint
with line of sight to the plaza,” said Joe. “I bet if we got up top we could
get a good look at the number of synnies we’re dealing with.”

Gantz imagined how the dealership would look
at this time of night, but his mind’s eye was drawn to the two-story building
next door. He nodded in agreement.

Joe turned left down Eckles Street and then
hung a right onto Harris Parkway. Halfway down the street, Gantz pointed to the
curb.

“Pull up right there,” he said.

“What is this place?” asked Cyn.

“The WG,” said Joe. “Something like a
church. Dad was a big believer in freedom of religion, even though he didn’t
care for it himself.”

“The first feed,” said Cyn, nodding.
“Imagine if you always had God whispering in your ear day in and day out. It’d
be worse than listening to Banks or Coker.”

Gantz wanted to argue the point, but his
eyes had fallen on the open doors of the Spiritual Center. There was splintered
wood at the top and bottom, as if someone had tried to break them down. It was
all the encouragement Gantz needed to jump out of the car and rush the stairs.
He ignored Joe’s questions as he entered the auditorium, gun drawn.