Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

The woman nodded, leaning close enough that Leah saw the coarse weave of her white coat and smelled vanilla and musk in her perfume. She laid slender fingers against Leah’s braided blonde hair and tilted her head forward, settling the cradle against the nape of her neck. It was chromed along the inside curve, shining and cold, and the technician adjusted it a little bit tight. “Does that pinch?”

“No.” Leah reached up and moved her braid. “Should it be that squeezy?”

“It’s safer to have it as tight as possible. I don’t want you rocking your head while you’re in VR, if the muscle relaxants and so forth aren’t 100 percent effective. You could damage your neural implants, or worse yet, your nervous system.”

“Like Aunt Jenny,” Leah said absently, closing her eyes. She’d been to the hospital that afternoon. Her dad had brought her and Genie up to see Aunt Jenny, and the three of them had given her a stuffed wolf the size of a cocker spaniel. Jenny’s eyes had sparkled with strange mirth when Leah’s dad tucked it in next to her, and she’d turned her head slightly to press her cheek against the soft, synthetic fur.

“Something to look forward to, Maker,” he had said, smoothing her hair off her forehead in a way that made Leah’s stomach feel funny. “I’m flattered you hung on to that nickname, by the way. I remember how much you hated it when I gave it to you.”

It must be one of those things I’ll get when I’m older, Leah thought, because she knew Jenny’s mother had been Wolf Clan but that didn’t explain why she got the feeling that Jenny would have been choking sick with laughter if she were able. It hadn’t lasted, because then Dad had to tell her how the Hartford police had found Barb’s body, and that the flowers had actually come from Valens.

“Aunt Jenny?” the tech asked.

Leah opened her eyes and looked up. “Sorry, I was thinking. Jenny Casey. She works here.”

“Well,” the tech said. “I never would have guessed. You don’t look a thing like her. But if you are related, I see why you qualified for this program. She’s something else again.”

“Yeah, she is.” Leah smiled privately. “She’s not my real aunt. She’s my dad’s best friend.”

“Cool.” The tech grinned and flicked her ponytail back over her shoulder. “Funny all of you ended up in the same place, though. That must be interesting.”

Funny, Leah thought. It is funny, isn’t it?

And then the tech pressed the IV needle into her arm, and Leah felt her body start to go numb. This is what Aunt Jenny’s going through, she thought, except in reverse. Soon she’ll be able to feel her fingers and her toes again.

And what will happen then?

Leah didn’t know. But she had a funny feeling it would be Something.

Bloor Street Coffee Shop

Toronto, Ontario

Tuesday 3 October, 2062

Morning

Elspeth looked up from the wrought-iron table under the red-streaked maple tree and sighed under her breath. Colonel Valens set his paper cup down before her and smiled. “Do you mind if I sit?”

Not if you’re sitting on a garden rake. “Please,” she said. “Did you follow me down?”

“Am I so transparent?”

I could wish you a little more transparent, frankly. She forced her lips into a curve. She never used to have much skill at lying, but a decade in prison changes a person. She thought about Richard, and she smiled — a smile that came easier. Is it weird that you trust a computer program more than a person?

No. Not when it’s this computer program. Not when it’s this person. “Colonel Valens, transparent may be the one thing I would never call you. You want to know how our attempts to contain the Feynman AI are proceeding?”

“I wanted to let you know that we’re going to power down and purge the intranet tonight. We think the rogue AI somehow seeded a subprocess into our network. There’s been unexplained usage.”

“Ah.” Elspeth swallowed, and met his gaze directly, and understood. He knows I know Richard was in there. You don’t suppose I’m lucky enough that he still thinks Richard is? “We’ll lose data.”

“We’ll do a blanket save-and-capture first. We have the original AI captive in a clean system — this way, if there’s a problem”— if you destroy him —“there are other options. You’re making progress with the programming?”

“Gabe is. He’s very good.” Calm, level, open. Dad’s dead now; Fred has to trust me.

“I wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t.” The iron chair scraped across paving blocks as he pulled it out and finally settled in. “You know I can’t afford to trust you, Elspeth.”

“I know,” she answered. She turned her cappuccino bowl on the saucer, frowning at her own bitten fingernails. “You know I’m never going to like you.”

“I rather thought that was a given. You’re not going to screw up this program on me, Elspeth, are you? I know you’ve been talking to Holmes, and you have some idea of what’s at stake.”

She chuckled and looked up, meeting his eyes. The stoneware was warm and smooth. It felt white, as an eggshell feels white. “Much as I’d like to spit on your shoes, Fred, and as stupid and pointless as I thought the fighting Canada was involved in when we first met was — no, I’m not going to destroy your program. I think it’s morally bankrupt. I think you’re morally bankrupt. But I’m also a Canadian first and foremost, and a humanitarian, and I see the need for us to get into space. However, I think intentionally crippling an intelligent life-form is a piss-poor way to do it.”

He snorted, an ironic smile reflected in his eyes. “Damn, woman, I admire you.”

It was intended to disarm her, and she made it look like it had worked, sitting back in her chair and straightening her shoulders. “You’ll get your slave. You’ll get Casey, too, I think. And if it ever comes down to the court-martial you so richly deserve, I really hope I’m called upon to testify.”

This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.

— Ursula K. Le Guin, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”

Early morning, Tuesday 4 October, 2062

National Defence Medical Center

Toronto, Ontario

Barbara’s dead. Dead, in Hartford. Nauseated by the knowledge, I know what she went back there for, the same way I knew it was her bullet that ended Mashaya Duclose’s life. You experience somebody enough, for long enough, and you just — know.

Barb always was a hell of a good shot. We all were. Grand-père taught us to shoot a.22 from when we were old enough to hold it up to our shoulders. Both she and I made a career out of that, in different ways. So I know.

I know because if Barbara Casey goes someplace for no good reason, and somebody turns up dead there, you know what her reason was. Because my sister made her living much the same way Bobbi Yee does, and Barb enjoyed it a hell of a lot more. And took the kind of high-paying jobs I’ve never known Bobbi to take. The ones I wouldn’t have taken myself, if they were offered to me.

God, I hope Mitch and Razorface are alive.

Barbara’s dead. It’s a funny feeling. An empty feeling. As if some part of me has been scraped out with a rubber spatula, the way you scrape the bowl out when you make cupcakes. An empty feeling, like all the closets and cupboards in my head are standing open. Like somebody’s moved out and taken all his stuff, and I haven’t got enough of my own left to fill in the vacant corners of my mind.