Аннали Ньюиц - Autonomous

The Pills began to chant. “What do we want? Patent reform! When do we want it? NOW!”

When Jack handed a box of antivirals to one of the drones, the machine used directional sound to speak into her ear: “Thank you. It’s time for humans to understand that property is death.” Surprised, she didn’t have time to reply before the drone surged upward, on a mission that went far beyond the goals of this protest.

That was the last thing she saw before the truncheon came down. It cracked her skull, covering her face with blood and sending her hat spiraling down into the harbor’s black water.

JULY 7, 2144

“It’s a bot revolution!” Threezed yelled, pointing at the mobile propped against the dashboard and laughing.

A flash of anger broke through Jack’s drug-induced tranquility. How could he just ignore all the danger and comment gleefully on this movie? Suddenly, she wanted more than anything to break through Threezed’s carefree bullshit.

“Didn’t they teach you shit in Shenzhen? Not even about classics like Metropolis ?”

Threezed hit the pause button, struck a sultry pose, and let his accent thicken. “No, they didn’t teach me shit in Shenzhen. Just how to look pretty and talk nice so I’d get slaved quick.” He looked like he was ready to slap her, or maybe to be slapped.

A wave of relaxation came over her, rolling back the rage. She was actually getting somewhere: Her guess at where he came from was apparently accurate—or accurate enough, anyway.

“So you’re from Shenzhen, eh?”

“From the Nine Cities Delta, anyway.” He named the special economic zone that sprawled across thousands of square kilometers in the southeastern Asian Union. No surprise that he came from there—nearly all industrial work was centered in the Nine Cities and Hong Kong.

“When did you enter contract?”

“I got slaved when I was five. My mom sold me to one of those indenture schools. They taught me to read and make an engine.” His attention wandered back to Metropolis , whose evil bot was frozen in the middle of a passionate speech about worker uprisings.

Outside, pale blue lakes flashed between dark pines. There were no cars on the road and it was almost evening.

“So how did you end up with that fusehead?”

Threezed was clearly feigning disinterest now, idly advancing the movie frame by frame. The bot clutched her breasts with agonizing slowness, eyes wide.

“The school went broke and auctioned off our contracts.”

Jack had read about tough cases where indentured had their contracts bought out from under them, their terms changed overnight. But she was still surprised to hear that one of the AU indenture schools, even a bankrupt one, had sold its wards without any background checks.

“They sold your contract to that guy?”

Threezed shrugged and poked the bot’s action forward on the monitor. “No, they sold me to this machining lab, and then the lab decided to cut corners, so they auctioned me out in Vegas.” He stretched, a sliver of brown belly showing between his shirt and the waistband of his pants. “That was about three years ago.”

“And you never made it out of contract that whole time?”

“Why are you asking me all this shit? You a human resources manager, when you’re not pirating drugs?”

For the first time, Jack realized that Threezed’s sarcasm wasn’t bullshit. It was a perimeter weapon, and probably the main reason he’d made it this far with his mind intact. Instead of asking more questions, she leaned over to kiss Threezed hard on the mouth. His reaction was not artful. It felt sloppy and real.

JULY 8, 2144

Yellowknife was still hours away. Jack and Threezed slept in a tangle of thermal sheets in the back of her truck, legs and arms touching, until an alert sound announced that they’d entered city limits. It was 4:00 a.m. and sunlight slanted through bright, deserted streets.

Jack sent a message to Mali, who replied right away.

Do stop by for breakfast. I have given up on getting Judy back to sleep.

After decades of indecision, Mali had finally had a baby. Of course she was awake at an absurd hour of the morning.

They pulled up outside a one-story house in a suburb of identical homes built to look like twentieth-century log cabins hidden among trees. Mali waited for them at the door, her black hair in a neat bob, her slacks and shirt carefully pressed for work. Thirty years on the highest-recommended daily dose of Vive had kept Mali looking about the same age as her interns. She held Judy face-out against her chest, smiling over the infant’s dark, wet curls and uselessly wiggling feet. The scene was so normal and almost comically domestic that Jack felt momentarily safe. She dropped her sack to the ground and gave her old friend a hug, careful not to crush the damp baby.

“I’ve got some coffee and oatmeal going.” Mali led them into a modest living room full of blocky furniture, antique shag rugs, and a tabletop projecting muted scenes from the morning news. Jack dumped a pile of boxes emblazoned with Ganesh onto the sofa.

“Let’s go over that after breakfast,” Jack said. “By the way, this is Threezed.”

Threezed shook Mali’s hand. “Thank you for your hospitality,” he said formally. It was the first time Jack had seen him interact with other people. His manners were so good it was as if they’d been ironed into him.

They proceeded into a warm kitchen, settling down at a table built in a semicircle around the cooker. Its four little doors were already steaming with cups of coffee behind them. Jack helped herself to one and watched Mali rearrange Judy in the crook of her arm.

Jack tried to make small talk. “How are things at the hospital?”

“Pretty good. How’s your business going?”

The baby began to cry, and refused to respond to Mali’s shushing. At last, a young woman entered the room from the back door and took Judy from Mali wordlessly, rocking the little girl in one arm while retrieving the final cup of coffee with the other. Mali neither introduced the woman nor looked at her. Jack glanced sideways at Threezed, wondering what he thought of Mali’s casual rudeness toward her indentured nanny. He glanced at the nanny as she left with the baby, his mouth quirking into its usual expression of arch amusement.

“I’m sorry, Jack, you were saying?”

“There’s been a problem, actually. This may be my last shipment for a long while.” Jack needed to tell somebody, to air her guilt in this safe kitchen where she could smell oatmeal being assembled. The words tumbled out in a rush. “I sold some reverse-engineered Zacuity. But of course their trials didn’t catch all the possible side effects. Now my customers are giving Zaxy a free trip back to Phase 1.” Phase 1 clinical trials were for one thing only: To find out if a new drug could kill people.

“Wait, what?” Mali looked ill. “You’re the one behind those drug psychosis episodes? What the hell are you doing selling shit like that?”

“Zaxy is an IP hoarder.”

“So liberate more of their antivirals. Or go after those new marrow regenerators. Nobody needs Zacuity.”

“People want it. Plus, it is kind of a necessity. When you’re competing for jobs with people who take it, Zacuity could mean the difference between employment and unemployment.”

Jack wasn’t even convinced by her own argument. Mali shook her head, her face reflecting a mixture of care and anger that looked too complicated for her youthful features.

“Jack, I’m worried about you. This Zacuity situation… we’ve seen some really bad stuff at the hospital. And Zaxy is just as likely to murder you as they are to arrest you.”