Robin Wasserman - Shattered

“Some things are necessary,” he said.

It took a moment for the meaning to sink in. “You make yourself look weaker ?” I asked incredulously. “For effect?”

Auden pulled himself up straighter, his expression grimly proud. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”

Savona bared his teeth in a mirthless smile. “He’s not as weak as he was the day you abandoned him,” he said, placing a supportive hand on Auden’s shoulder. Auden shrugged him off. “But the damage you caused is permanent. Damage to his spine, his organs, his life expectancy—”

“It was an accident,” Ani said.

I said nothing.

“But you made him stronger too,” Savona said. “You showed him the way.”

“Then why can’t he speak for himself?” I snapped. “Or is he too drugged up and brainwashed to even know I’m here?”

Auden raised his head. His eyes were paler in person, his pupils still too large. “The only drugs I’m on are for the pain.”

He raised a hand to his face, then abruptly dropped it, as if trying to adjust glasses that he’d just remembered were no longer there. Suddenly the last six months dropped away and I was back in his hospital room, standing by his bed, begging him to forgive me, because if he did—if he had—none of it would have happened, I would be home and we would be together, whole and healed, and everything else would be background noise. Something to watch on the vids, and then shut off when it got old.

“What do you want?” he asked flatly.

“Just to talk. You and me. Can’t we just go somewhere? Away from…” I glanced at Savona.

Auden shook his head.

“Maybe it’s not a bad idea,” Savona murmured in honeyed tones.

“No,” Auden said sharply. “Not going to happen.” Savona nodded. I recognized that nod. It was the same one that Jude got from his mechs when he issued one of his edicts. It was a pledge of obedience. Savona was letting Auden believe he was in charge.

Or Auden really was.

As Auden took a few steps, it became clear that the weakened martyr onstage was less of an illusion than he would have liked to think. Slowly, with one foot dragging slightly behind the other, he lurched around the side of the desk. His gait was awkward and spasmodic, almost like mine when I’d first learned to walk in the new body. I tried not to imagine the electrical impulses shooting through his spinal cord, stimulating dead nerves to life, one painful step at a time. He sank into the desk chair with a soft sigh of relief and rested his arms on a stack of papers. It took me until that moment to realize this was his office not Savona’s. Whatever Auden was, he wasn’t zoned and he wasn’t a puppet.

“I don’t know your name,” he said, looking at Ani for the first time.

She looked at me, like I was supposed to give her the answer. Or maybe just permission. “Ani,” she finally said.

He nodded. “Ani. You’ve been visiting us for the last few weeks.”

“I didn’t mean to—”

Auden held up a hand to stop her. “It’s fine. But there’s no need for all this sneaking around. The Temple of Man is a public space. We’re here to help anyone who needs us.”

“Really?” I snarled. “Even us world-destroying soulless monsters? Tell me something—if your God’s so impressive and all-powerful, how come he can’t give a soul to a machine? He can do anything, just not that?”

“He’s not my God,” Auden said, and I felt at least a shadow of relief that however far gone he was, he hadn’t plunged all the way off the cliff. But then he kept going. “He’s just God.” He shot a quick glance at Savona, who nodded in approval.

“He can do anything He so chooses, as you astutely point out,” Savona put in. “He could have created a universe where gravity is repulsive or men walk on their hands or giant lizards rule the Earth. But he didn’t. He created this universe and does honor to us by His choice. He chose to endow humans—only humans—with a soul, to make us rulers in His earthly kingdom. And much as you might enjoy indulging your what-ifs and could-have-beens, this is our reality, yours as much as mine. The sooner you face that, the easier it will be for you.”

Shades of Jude, I thought. Funny how eager some people were to accuse you of denying the truth—especially when “the truth” was one they’d invented.

“You really believe this crap?” I asked Auden. “What happened to science? Logic? The power of empiricism, all that?”

“Logic and empiricism dictate that the ability to mimic self-awareness doesn’t establish the existence of an inner life. Human consciousness transcends computation.” He didn’t even look at me. “You’re not to blame for what you are,” he told Ani. “You don’t understand, which must be difficult. And when you’re ready, we’re here to help. Bring your friends, if you’d like. We have nothing to hide.”

“What makes you think we need your help?” I asked. “Or anyone’s?”

“Not we,” Auden said. “Just her. She’s welcome here whenever she likes. You’re not. Ever.”

“Because I know who you really are,” I told him. “And it’s not this .”

“Tell yourself whatever you want.” It was like nothing I said touched him. No emotion, no hesitation, nothing. “But you’re leaving and you’re not coming back.” He pressed a button on his desk console and spoke past us to an unseen minion. “Can you please escort our visitors out of the building?”

“And what if we don’t want to go?” I asked.

I wanted to go.

“This will be easier on everyone if you just go quietly,” Savona said. “Especially you, Lia.”

The door opened behind us. “Let’s go,” said Auden’s faithful minion, her voice sickeningly familiar.

I curled my hands into fists, grinding my nails into the synflesh of my palms, a helpful reminder. I am a machine. I am in control. Nothing can hurt me.

Then I turned around to face my sister.

We didn’t speak. Not as she led us out of Auden’s office and through the corridors bustling with robed ex-Faithers, or Brothers, or whatever they called themselves, and not when she took us on an unnecessary detour through a wide hangar in which orderly lines of city poor waited patiently for handouts of bread and plankton soup, all in the shadow of a rusted airplane, its windows shattered and its fuselage layered with years of graffiti and rust.

Not until we passed through the final door and were released into open air. I stopped, staring down Zo in her shimmering robe, her blond hair nearly as short as Ani’s and just as spiky, her face painted not with the retro makeup she used to favor but with a delicate silver temp tattoo on her left cheek, the same stylized double helix that the Brotherhood of Man had emblazoned across its zone, its Temple, and apparently, its servants. “What the hell, Zo?”

“Hello to you too, sis.” She smiled, and not her patented screw-you smile. Not even the fake, brittle grimace that she’d shot in my direction for the first few weeks after the download, before we’d declared open war. This was something different, the same creepily serene look as on the faces of all the robed figures we’d passed in the halls. “Long time, no see.”

“So I’m your sister again all of a sudden?” What would she need with a sister, now that she had her Brothers ?

Her face melted into a sympathetic frown, equally unsettling. “You believe you are,” she said. “The Brotherhood has helped me see that’s not your fault. You can’t be blamed for the delusions of your programming.”

“Delusions. Right.”

Ani clamped a hand over my forearm. “Let’s just go.”