Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

That’s what brings me back to the more presently real, the here-and-now: splintering plastic, and Barb’s hand crushing my right one. She leans across the table now, yelling into my face, and I blink twice and try to shake it off, eyes closed, head tossing.

“Jenny, dammit, talk to me!” And damned if she doesn’t actually look and sound concerned.

I look down. I’ve cracked the high-impact plastic table, left a spiderweb of lines lacing it where my steel hand clutched tight. “Fuck me,” I say.

“Are you all right? It looked like a seizure or something. Shit. Valens can wait, we can go to the hospital…”

“No.” Not NDMC. Not if they paid me. Not even the new Toronto General. “It was just a senior moment. Panic attack. It’s all right now.”

She sits back on her bench, but her hand stays on mine. “Sure?”

“Damn sure.” I extricate my hand, which is shaking, and down the bourbon in a gulp.

“Casey. You know better.” And I’m so rattled I don’t even hear him come up behind me. My hand slaps the thigh of my BDUs, where my sidearm should be, and I curse Canada briefly. I never would have thought I’d feel— naked —walking around Toronto without a gun strapped to my body.

Valens had been five measured paces away when he spoke to me. Smart. He covers two of those steps while I slide out of the booth and stand, turning to face him. He has enough sense not to stick his paw out. I’d rather kiss a snake than shake that man’s hand.

“Fred.” There’s something satisfying about not having to call him Captain . Colonel, I guess it is now, although he’s out of uniform, and he does stick out like the emerald stud on Razorface’s nose. His hair has gone a gleaming silver that picks up the flickering colors of the strobes, but the cut is less conservative than it used to be. He looks fit and solid for an older man. “You gonna have a seat?”

“If you don’t mind?” He gestures me back into the booth as Barb stands.

She takes a step away. “I’ll leave you two to talk things out without my interference. Frederick, I’ll come by your office tomorrow, if that suits.”

“Very well. Thank you, Barbara.” The smile he gives her makes me want to break his teeth. But then, the fact that he’s still breathing makes me want to break his teeth, so I guess it’s no big shock.

Barb nods to me before she walks away, leaving her wineglass on the table. My eyes don’t follow. I’m looking at Valens, who is settling himself onto the loathsome vinyl across from me.

He takes a breath and looks me dead in the eye before he speaks. I won’t look down. “You look better than I expected. Who’s been handling your follow-up?”

“A friend of a friend.” I’m telling you nothing. “Barb says you’ve got something that can help with the interface breakdown I’m supposed to be experiencing.”

“Supposed to be? No symptoms yet?”

I wish I hadn’t finished my bourbon. I push the glass away so that I won’t fiddle with it. Whether it’s sitting across from Valens for the first time in over a decade or something else, I’m abruptly aware of all the great and small pains at war in my body. I open my mouth to lie, and then have to swallow the bitterness of not being able to do it.

I hate the man with every fiber of my being. And sure as taxes, I owe him my life, or at least the fact that I’m sitting there across from him and not rotting in a hospital bed. And I might not have minded, if it had all stopped there, even though they didn’t ask. The army doesn’t have to ask.

The thing is, the first time your body just starts reflexively doing things that are hardwired into a nanoprocessor relay and not your own nervous system, it can take you by surprise. Especially if you haven’t been warned what to expect. Especially if it ends with people getting killed.

Funny thing that. Things that end with people getting killed never seem to end with the right people getting killed.

“Yeah,” I say, after a long pause. “I’m having symptoms.”

He nods. He even looks genuinely concerned. Hell, he may be. I’m the man’s great triumph, after all.

“We’ve discovered an ongoing myelin breakdown that seems to be triggered by the electrical impulses from the nanoprocessors.” Valens never sugarcoated anything in his life. It may be his best trait.

I lean forward to listen more closely. “You’re talking about loss of nerve function. Paralysis?”

“Eventually. Numbness in the extremities first. Loss of motor control, body temperature regulation. And once the dampers in your implants start failing, pain like you wouldn’t believe.”

“I’d believe a lot of pain, Doc.”

He winces, touches his forehead. “There’s also a larger neurological issue. The brain wetware, that needs to come out. We’ve lost three of your group so far because of synaptic dysfunction.”

“Define dysfunction for the interested observer.” Right, I’m a blasted museum piece. So nice to be reminded. A sense of detachment is stealing over me, a sensation I used to feel a lot more. It’s been creeping back lately.

“Basically, a complex of problems. Something like old-time Alzheimer’s, if you remember what that is, coupled with a lot of random synaptic firing. Forgetfulness. And hallucinations.”

“Flashbacks.”

“Yes. Essentially, you’re looking at senile dementia in about five years. What are you now, fifty?”

“Forty-nine. There’s a cure for Alzheimer’s.”

“Early stage, yes.” He nods, pushing Barb’s wineglass out of the way. “We plan to use the same tech to repair the damage caused by the continued insult to your nervous system. Nanosurgery. As a minor bonus, we can fix a lot of the scardown, too — and the more superficial scarring. The stuff you didn’t want to go reconstructive on, way back when. No knives.”

The skin at the base of my neck creeps. “Just bugs crawling around under my skin.”

Open hands, and earnest expression. He’s that kind of distinguished good-looking that wins twenty-year-old trophy wives. I wonder if Valens has a wife. I never asked. He doesn’t wear a ring — but then, he’s a surgeon. “It’s the same tech they’re using for the neural VR interfaces.”

“Safe?”

“No more dangerous than giving birth to twins.”

“If it doesn’t work?”

“Two possibilities. If it really fucks up, vegetative state.”

“Charming. What’s possibility number two?”

“A ventilator and a hospital bed.”

“Ah.” I close my eyes. I try to think back to the last time I felt warm and safe and halfway in control of the future, and I can’t. Maybe when I was seventeen, eighteen. There was a boy named Carlos. He wanted to marry me. It didn’t work out that way. Flashbacks? “What if it works?”

Valens taps the table with his left hand, and I wonder if this is going better than he expected. I haven’t broken his shoulder again. Yet. “Less pain. Better mobility. Less hardware. The nanites can be tailored to consume a lot of the primitive wetware and reuse the materials. Also, your life span extended from an estimated five to ten, to indefinite.”

“I see.” One last question. And only one.

He holds his breath.

I chew on the inside of my cheek for a minute before I ask it. “What’s it gonna cost me, Fred?”

“It will cost you. I’m not going to lie about that. We need your help.” He leans forward and spreads his hands wide, broad fingers that don’t look deft enough for a doctor. “We need volunteers.”

“I’m too old for fighting, Valens.” It’s an effort to remember to use his first name. It’s an effort not to call him Captain . Colonel. Whatever. Damn. I was in the army a hell of a long time. Running my thumb over the surface of the table, I study the smear of skin-oil it leaves.