The Eternal Prison (17 page)

 

I looked around the corridor. Other cops stalked past us, glanced at Krasa, and ignored Marko and me like we were freight. Krasa swaggered ahead of me like she didn’t have a worry, gesturing us through a series of doors with a negligent sort of assumption I admired. She was a cop on the verge of having her file pulled, and she was burrowing into Cop Central with me in tow, unprocessed. She was not fucking herself—she’d been fucked a long time ago. What she was doing was digging up her own body and enthusiastically re-fucking it, and it was kind of exhilarating to watch.

 

I slid my eyes to Marko, who was holding on to my right arm and trying to look tough. His ID was turned inward inside his jacket, obscuring the blue border that proclaimed him Tech Services. He seemed to enjoy playing the role of ass-kicking cop, though anyone with street eyes would peg him for a paper-pusher at a hundred feet, with his soft posture and off-balance walk, his cheap fucking clothes. He was sweating.

 

“Tell me about it,” I said quietly.

 

He blinked a few times rapidly. “What? The technology? What Marin’s doing? It’s elegant.”

 

He turned to look over his shoulder, the fucking asshole, looking guilty. He leaned in close, smelling like bad cologne, the sort of stuff that went bad in the bottle, getting fishy. “Digitization of the brain used to cause unstoppable neuron-mapping corruptions in about ninety-nine percent of subjects, because the original algorithms were based on the assumption that it was the physical makeup of a brain that dictated how it was wired, you know? Instead of realizing that people’s brains wired up based on a lot of experiences. But it used to be a ninety-nine percent kill rate—digital copy came out as noise, and noise left behind in the host. It scrambled them. When the Undersecretaries worked on the project that eventually gave us Dick Marin, man, they went through like two hundred candidates before they got one that took. Marin was on like the frickin’ tenth list or some shit. They’d hoped for better—Squalor’s project, of course, wasn’t going to work, but everyone wants to fucking live forever. We solved the problem, though. You can’t predict the mapping—you just have to follow every connection, one after the other. Takes fucking
hours,
but it leaves a perfect copy. The host, uh, well, the host still always dies.”

 

He sounded vaguely embarrassed, but I suspected he was only embarrassed to have to
admit
it. “Does sound elegant,” I said. “Sort of a zero-sum equation, huh?”

 

“It
is,
” he enthused. “Think about it—four hours and you’re digitized, and you can be slotted into an avatar over and over again, or exist in quantum space as a floating intellect. It’s
immortality,
you know?” He nodded, his grip on my arm becoming annoyingly tight. I considered teaching him a lesson in shitty fucking police work but decided it would be counterproductive to cause a scene when I was supposed to be wallpaper walking around, just another subdued shithead being escorted to a tune-up.

 

“What’s the scope?”

 

Marko coughed, and now I thought he
was
actually embarrassed. “Global,” he said in a low voice.

 

“You’re fucking kidding,” I said, frowning.
Global.
Fucking hell, the whole world, sucked up into a mainframe, dancing to Marin’s tune, the avatars equipped with controlling circuits that would force them to do whatever Marin thought was important. Everyone dead, walking the earth. I wondered why it was that the three or four madmen who’d been tearing shit up the last few years were always intent on
killing
everyone.

 

I felt tired for a moment, then realized I didn’t actually feel anything.

 

“That’s why I’m
here,
” he said quickly. “Risking my neck. To be fair,” Marko went on in his lecturing voice, “there would be advantages. No more violence, no more disorders. Great minds could communicate and collaborate easily, at faster-than-light speeds.”

 

My urge to do some violence to Marko was almost blinding. “Captain,” I said in a low voice. “Tell your partner here to shut up, or the prisoner might show him how to break an arm when your hands are secured in front of you.”

 

“Mr. Marko,” she said immediately without turning or stopping, “shut the fuck up until spoken to or I might give the prisoner permission.”

 

I didn’t look at the Techie, but I heard the satisfying click of teeth as he shut his mouth. Fucking
advantages.
I felt him shift away from me, putting some daylight between us, and felt a little better.

 

We turned a corner and headed down a dead end that terminated with a door that was exactly like the others except for a thin blue border around the frame. Krasa stopped and let us catch up to her.

 

“How do you find your way around this place?” I asked, twisting my wrists again.

 

She didn’t look at me. “You memorize everything,” she said flatly. “Mr. Marko?”

 

I frowned a little. “You can’t open that door?”

 

She shrugged her coat onto her shoulders. “Colonels and up can,” she said tightly. “Too many lower ranks were barging in and beating the tar out of the Technical Associates.”

 

We stood there in an odd awkward silence for a moment, and then Marko stepped forward, gestured, and the door popped open with a soft click. Krasa immediately shoved him aside and led us through.

 

“Didn’t really stop them,” Marko muttered as I stepped past him.

 

The blue-framed door led to a small room with barely enough floor space for the three of us to stand comfortably. Another handleless door that might have been an exact copy of the first faced us. Wordlessly, Marko stepped forward.

 

“You got a promotion, huh?” I said to the bush of hair threatening to envelop Marko’s neck.

 

He half turned his head, looking down at the floor with his hand raised. His jaw muscles bunched. “Hense wrote me up, a commendation,” he said. “I’m assistant director of Technical Services for the Northeast Administrative Division.”

 

I gave Marko a low whistle, admiring his broad shoulders and impressively curly hair. “Assistant fucking director, huh?”

 

He snapped his head forward again and gestured the door open. “Fuck you,” he muttered.

 

My hands twitched. Krasa barked a laugh. “Fuck
you,
he says, bold as fucking brass.” My arms started upward, and her hand lashed out and took hold of one wrist, stopping me. “Don’t assault the assistant director,” she said, and pushed Marko roughly toward the door. “Technically, he outranks me.”

 

I put a small, inoffensive smile on my face and offered up the low, impressed whistle again.

 

The
assistant fucking director
led us into a lab setup, white walls and floor, black ceiling, counters and equipment lining the walls. It wasn’t a particularly large room. The far wall was dotted with dozens of input jacks.

 

Marko swept into the room fluidly, stretching and pulling off his jacket, his sleeves already rolled up. He looked bigger suddenly, like a guy who’d found his scale—like the room had been built around him, perfectly proportioned to him. I let my hands rest and just watched him as he crossed over to a bank of cabinets and began searching through them fussily, gesturing open the locked drawers with perfunctory, well-learned movements. His hands looked like they belonged on someone else, like they weren’t really part of his short, chubby body. Like he’d stolen them from someone else.

 

“Let’s see, I know I had him down here. A copy of him, I mean.”

 

“An unauthorized copy,” Krasa said softly, sounding bored.

 

“Yes, yes,” Marko muttered, opening drawers and peering into them in rapid succession. “Ah! Here he is.”

 

He turned, yellow teeth ugly in the midst of all that hair. He was holding a slim white rectangular box in one hand, thin and stained with several dark fingerprints. A short cable hung from one end, dangling in the air. “Meet Dr. Amblen. Or a simulacrum thereof.” The smile disappeared, snapping off his face instantly. “I’m never clear on the terminology.”

 

“Uh-huh.” I gave my wrists a twist, feeling nothing. “And what do we do with him?”

 

“Ah!” Marko snapped his fingers and turned, striding for the far wall. “We plug him in, of course. The bricks are set to go into sleep cycle when disconnected and to wake up on plug in.”

 

With his back to us, he took the dangling cable in one hand and shoved it into a jack on the wall, apparently at random. Then he took a single step back.

 

“Dr. Amblen?”

 

Nothing happened. Marko turned to flash us a politician’s grin, holding up one hand to signal patience. I investigated and found I didn’t have any, but I did have a strap around my wrists so I didn’t do anything about it.

 

“Dr. Amblen?” Marko repeated, at the same volume.

 

There was a curious humming sound, tuneless and irritating. It went on for a few seconds, and I wanted to cover my ears or walk out of the room, the sound getting under my skin somehow and scraping along my nerves. Then it was gone, and there was a hollow sense of someone on the line, as if we’d made a particularly long-distance connection to someone.

 

“Who are you?”

 

Marko turned around and gave us his political grin again. “He doesn’t retain much from session to session, due to limited storage and low voltage in the brick. We actually didn’t expect
any
retention when in portable storage—we expected them to boot up back in their initial states every time. But he does remember certain things. He sometimes thinks they’re dreams.”

 

“I said… who
are
you?”

 

The simulated voice was elderly, shaky and dry. It pumped outrage and anger into the room. I immediately formed a mental image of Dr. Amblen, who I’d never seen: white and pale, with skin like paper, white haired and severe, a long, sharp nose cutting through the air disdainfully. I hated him.

 

“I’m Dr. Ezekiel Marko, Dr. Amblen,” Marko said, still grinning at us as he shoved his hands into his pockets. “We’ve spoken before.”

 

“
We have
not,” the voice snapped, swelling up suddenly, as if the bits and bytes inside the brick had finally gotten their shit together and formed up into an actual intelligence. His frail voice quaked through the air as if he were the room, or the shell—but I’d never heard a shell with that much cranky, pissed-off personality.
“I’m not feeling well.”

 

I wondered, for a second, how they came up with the voice—and
why.
Why bother giving him a voice that approximated his own, or did they just have a generic old-man voice?

 

“Dr. Amblen,” Marko continued, still grinning, like this was a pattern, something he’d been through many times. “I’d like to ask you a few questions. About the Deva Project. You freelanced on it.”

 

There was a pause, the only sound the steady hum.
“I do not wish to talk about that. Who are you?”

 

Marko’s smile was painted on, painful to look at. “I’m Dr. Ezekiel Marko, and I need to know infiltration vectors for the consciousness matrix you helped design. I need to know data flow patterns, handshake codes, and security layers.”

 

That hum again, edging into my organs and making them swell.

 

“You’re looking to hack, naughty boy,”
Amblen said crisply.
“Don’t you pups know anything about social engineering? You don’t just
ask
for such things. You provoke them. You trick, you charm.”
He sounded peevish.
“Everything went to hell during Unification. Straight to fucking hell.”

 

Marko nodded. “I need infiltration vectors for the Deva Project, Dr. Amblen. Will you help?”

 

“All the information I could give you is outdated. Keys changed, numbers resifted, new layers added. This was years ago, son.”

 

Marko kept nodding. “Yes. Will you help?”

 

Another pause.
“The Deva Project. Hmmph. You’re going after that son of a bitch Marin, yes?”
There was a blast of weird static, as if Amblen had tried to make a sound the rendering software couldn’t interpret. “
Then yes, by god, I’ll help. Where… where am I? I need my lab. Take me… what… take me to my
lab.”

 

Marko was smiling and nodding, but his eyes were suddenly locked on Krasa. I followed his gaze, studying her for a moment before realizing what he’d noticed: Her gold badge, the pocket-sized hologram that made her a
cop,
a little god, was no longer gold. It glowed a bloody, rusty red.

 

“You’ve been burned,” he said to her, his voice somehow containing wonder.

 

She tore at her coat and stared. I looked back at Marko and smiled at him. “So have you!” I said cheerfully, enjoying it for some reason.

 

He lifted his jacket and stared at his own ID badge, which had transformed from a soft hazy blue to the same shade of angry red.

 

“Oh,
shit,
” he said softly.

 

 

 

 

XIV

ROLLING ALONG TO SOME INEVITABLE DISASTER