Рич Ларсон - Tomorrow Factory - Collected Fiction

Silas weighed it. Part of him wanted nothing more than to get off the Anastasia by any means necessary, get far away from this nightmare circus of meat and mad AIs. A lifeboat beeline for Pentecost was tempting.

But even on full burn, it would take another month to reach the planet. A lifeboat’s freethinker was nowhere near equipped to hold a ghost. By the time they docked, Haley might be nothing but nonsense code and a jumble of decaying memories.

And if they took the lifeboat, Cena would have to die for it.

“You’re with them right now, aren’t you?” Io was silent for a long moment, waiting on the reply. “Silas?”

“She saved my life,” Silas finally said. “Pulled me back into the ship.”

There was a long pause. “You have Haley’s ghost, right?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I have her.”

“If we don’t get out of here, and soon, she won’t have a chance at recovery. You know that.”

There was another chance at recovery, but Silas couldn’t tell Io that. Not with Anastasia potentially listening in.

“So where are you?” Io pressed. “We’re heading to the lower decks. Engineering. We going to find you there?”

“Yeah,” Silas lied. “Engine room. Come in carefully. She has a, uh, a kind of plasma cutter.”

“Be nice to have a fucking howler,” Io said. “Alright. Sit tight, stay away from the door. And don’t tip her off.”

“Alright.” Silas chinned his radio off. There was a cold slick of sweat on his shoulders that had nothing to do with the clammy flesh suit. Cena stood at the hatch, waiting. She set the slicer down, then put her hands on either side of her misshapen head and twisted. It tore free with a rending noise that shivered Silas’s teeth.

“This is it,” she said, discarding the chunk of rubbery flesh, picking up her slicer. “You ready?”

Silas keyed his external mic. “Yeah.” He fingered the neural cord she’d managed to find him, hoping all the conductors would still fire. “Ready.”

Cena fixed him with a flint stare. “Who were you talking to?”

“Myself,” Silas said. “I talk too much. I may be losing my mind.”

“All mad here,” Cena replied. She didn’t look like she believed him, but she still turned and wrenched the maintenance hatch open.

Cena stormed out onto the bridge wailing like a banshee, raking the slicer’s beam in wild arcs, scorching trenches into the ceiling’s overgrowth. Silas winced when she clipped a projector, leaving it black and smoking. He’d told her not to fry any circuitry.

“I’m here!” Cena called. “Anastasia! I’m here! No more hiding, no more sneaking. Eat me!”

Even as she screamed it, the bioship responded to the intrusion, oozing clear mucus into the sizzling furrows while tentacles snapped from the floors and walls. They converged on her like vipers, baring hooks and barbs, and Cena cut down the first crop. A straggler darted under the beam and wrapped around her foot. She stomped, swore, fumbled with her makeshift weapon.

Silas was so caught up he nearly forgot why he was there. Then Haley’s ghost pinged through his radsuit’s processor, and he located the soft blue glow of the ship’s main interface. The few tentacles dangling overtop of it strained in the direction of the fracas, distracted. Anastasia’s full attentions were on Cena and her slicer. Silas reminded himself he was invisible, took a steadying breath, and ambled out of the maintenance hatch.

It only took moments to traverse the length of the bridge, but it seemed like a hard eternity. Silas walked slowly, eyes fixed ahead. Cena shouted and shot down wave after wave of roiling tentacles. The hot orange flash of the slicer swam purple blots across Silas’s vision. The noise of searing meat and Cena cackling was loud, loud in his head. He walked through the chaos, untouched, and finally found himself standing where things first went to shit, right in front of the innocent blue interface.

He chanced a look at the two tentacles overhead, straining towards the fray like overeager watch dogs. Then he dug his hands through the stumps of his flesh suit and hooked the neural cord into the interface’s port.

Overhead, the tentacles shifted.

Silas removed his lumpy head next, freeing up the concordant port on the neck of his radsuit. With one last look back at Cena trying to coax dregs from the slicer’s battery, Silas jammed the neural cord into his neck and closed the circuit.

In. Silas slid through virtual space, wriggling through the now-active detection system, throwing up a blizzard of nonsense code that masked his passage through the core files. The personality module loomed, hulking, throbbing. Larger and more complex than any freethinker Silas had ever cracked, a writhing mass of electric thought. But he didn’t have to crack it. All he had to do was replace it.

Silas pulled Haley’s neural imprint from the flagging processor in his radsuit and pushed it across the channel. She streamed into the personality module as a digital flood, seeping into the cracks, coursing through the nodes. Code danced and jittered as it rewrote itself. Silas prayed hard to any god.

“What the fuck are you doing, Silas?”

He realized Io’s voice was not coming through his radio at the same instant he recognized the shape of a thumb pressed up to his neck.

“Fixing the freethinker,” Silas said, but even as he said it he felt his connection guillotine. He blinked, nerves tingling, back in the real world. Io was standing behind him.

“It’s beyond fixing. Said it yourself.” Io pulled him away from the interface, making the unhooked neural cord swing. “Dronyk didn’t see this coming. It’s not our shit to deal with.”

Silas realized he couldn’t hear Cena cursing. He turned and wished he hadn’t. The dead slicer was lying on the floor, and Cena’s limp body was being hoisted up the wall. A thick pale nutrient tube had appeared there, cilia waving in anticipation as the tentacles dragged her upward.

“You may leave now.” Anastasia’s voice blared through Silas’s head. “Your lifeboat is fueled.”

His heart stopped. It hadn’t worked. The transfer hadn’t worked. He’d dashed Haley’s ghost against the virtual rocks, or worse, she was trapped in some tiny corner of the freethinker’s personality module.

“Come on, Silas,” Io said shakily. “We have to get the fuck out of here.”

Silas looked from her to Yorick, who was silent, ash-white, uglier than he’d ever seen him. He would get no support there.

“Haley,” he pleaded. “Haley, can you hear me?”

“We’ll upload her to the lifeboat.” Io swallowed. “Even with the decay, you’ll at least have some of her. Some memories. That’s better than nothing.”

Silas shook his head, unable to explain. Cena inched up the wall. Her eyes were glazed over.

“Let’s go,” Io said. “Let’s live.”

Silas looked away before Cena reached the nutrient tube. He’d killed her, too. He knew he deserved to stay. He deserved to be the next one on the wall. But when Io grabbed him by the arm, he stumbled after her, tears tracking down his cheeks. Tentacles twitched as they passed.

Then, all at once, they went limp.

“Wait,” Silas rasped. “Wait. Do you hear that?”

The melody he’d been composing for the past three days trembled in the air, haunting and sweet, growing slowly louder as it looped. Io’s eyes widened.

“Silas?”

It wasn’t Io who said his name. The synthesized voice wavered through the bridge, unfamiliar and familiar at the same time.

“Haley.” Silas’s throat constricted. “This isn’t how I meant for you to wake up.”

There was a dull thump that made him jump. Cena’s unconscious form slumped to the floor, released by the tentacles. Silas staggered over to her body and checked for breath on his hand. Io and Yorick were still frozen to the spot, staring around.