Саймон Морден - Equations of Life

There was no sense of motion or the passage of time. They both stood next to a booth in a bar. On the table stood a swan-necked bottle of rice wine, and two shallow lacquered boxes which each contained a squat porcelain cup.

“Please, sit,” said Oshicora, and bent himself to slide along the red leather seat.

Petrovitch found himself better rendered. He wore a crisp white T-shirt under a battle smock, and his combat trousers tucked into the top of his black lace-up boots. He had skin tone, and fingernails, and glasses, which he instinctively pushed farther up the bridge of his nose.

He sat down opposite Oshicora, who poured sake into Petrovitch’s cup until some of it overflowed into the box. He put the bottle down and allowed Petrovitch to serve him.

“ Kanpai! ” Oshicora lifted his dripping cup and drank deeply.

“ Za vashe zdorovye, ” said Petrovitch, and did the same. He swallowed and waited for any after-effects. “This is so completely believable, I’m having all kinds of problems. I can taste it, yet I can’t get drunk on it.”

“If we ordered food, you would never eat your fill.” Oshicora topped up Petrovitch’s cup again. “That will have to wait for another day, I believe. Now, tell me about pizdets . Has that old goat Marchenkho been bothering you again?”

“Can we just go back one step?” Petrovitch took the bottle. It had weight. The liquid sloshed around as he moved it to refill Oshicora’s cup. “Do you know who you are?”

“I am a facsimile of Hamano Oshicora, set up in the VirtualJapan as the administrator function for the entire system. God, if you like.” He watched Petrovitch’s expression with amusement. “There are moments when I forget that I exist within a machine. I had not thought that possible, but they are there all the same. I look around and wonder where everyone is, and only then do I remember.”

Petrovitch took a long pull at his sake . He scratched at his chin and pulled at his earlobe. “This,” he started, then changed his mind. “Look, Oshicora-san. You’re dead. Hijo shot you. I had hoped you knew all this.”

Oshicora pushed his drink aside and leaned his elbows on the tabletop. “He killed me? My original? Interesting.”

Petrovitch sat back. “How can you be unaware of everything that’s happened? Helping Sonja escape, killing almost your entire workforce in the process? Taking over the Metrozone’s communications? Driving cars and flying drones? You phoned me up! Now half the city’s under water and the other half is being demolished by giant wrecking machines that you control. I’m here in a last-ditch effort to stop you, and all you can say is ‘Interesting?’ Yobany stos, man: there are millions dead and dying because of you.”

“I do not see how that can be true. I have been here, all this time.”

It was Petrovitch’s turn to look completely blank. He covered his confusion by draining every last drop of sake in his cup. “So if I said the words New Machine Jihad to you, it would mean nothing?”

“How did you hear of that?” Again, he looked amused, as if it were a matter of no consequence.

“The New Machine Jihad is the name of the… thing that’s destroying the Metrozone. But when I called it Oshicora-san, it answered. The New Machine Jihad is you.”

Oshicora shook his head. “No. That is simply not possible, and I will explain to you why. There is no connection between VirtualJapan and the wider network. This world is a bubble, sealed off for the moment. No data will get in or out until it is completely ready.”

“You can say that, but I know it’s not true. Why would the Jihad tell me that the shinkansen would run again? Why would it tell me to save Sonja? Why would it remember the promise you made to me? Why would it do any of these things if it wasn’t you?” Petrovitch stared hard at Oshicora’s faint smile. “So you have heard of the Jihad.”

“I dreamed of it, of a world where there was a revolution in technology: a new machine age.” He raised his eyebrows. “I had never expected to dream.”

“What else?”

“I dreamed of Oshicora’s daughter. And I dreamed of you. And a city, not like this one,” and he looked around him at the dark wood and burnished chrome, “but one made of steel and concrete, alive with movement and noise.”

Petrovitch understood at last. “Okay. What if I were to say to you that it’s your dreams that are leaking out into the real world? Your subconscious is running out of control, trying to create Tokyo from the ruins of the London Metrozone. Did you ever want to drive a train when you were younger?”

“Of course. I still do.”

“That little fantasy nearly killed me. You drove an express train at full speed into St. Pancras station while I was walking along the track. How about Sonja? How do you feel about her?”

“Protective. She is my creator’s child.”

“It’s more than that. You think she’s your daughter. Not up here,” Petrovitch said, tapping his head. He moved his hand to cover his heart. “but here. You told me to save her. I’ve rescued her from Sorenson, lost her to Chain, only to get her back from Hijo. And if I could, I’d show you what’s happening outside the tower. How it’s surrounded by water, choked with bodies and thick with rats feeding on the corpses. How there are fires everywhere, vast slices taken out of buildings as your monsters tear up the city. Oshicora-san, you might be sane in here, but out there, the New Machine Jihad is mad.”

“I appreciate the efforts you have made, Petrovitch-san. But I still do not see how this can possibly be.”

There was an envelope on the table in front of Petrovitch. It had his name on it in Cyrillic. It hadn’t been there a moment before.

“Is that for me?”

“Yes. I suggest you open it.”

Petrovitch picked up the envelope and slid his finger under the heavy paper flap. It tore open, and he eased the card out from inside. It was gold-edged, embossed, and had a big red octagon printed beneath bold words. “Yeah. A message from the monitoring software. I’ve gone into ventricular tachycardia.”

“Do you wish to leave and seek medical attention?”

He tapped the card on the table. “There’s nowhere to go. Any hospital that hasn’t been burned down to the ground by now is locked up tighter than the Lubyanka.”

“I have been trying,” said Oshicora, “to work out why you believe you are telling me the truth despite the impossibility of your claims. Now you seem to be prepared to die for what might well be a delusion. Normally, I would judge you to be mentally ill, but I know you. Do you think you have time to convince me otherwise?”

“You know, it’s not meant to be this hard.” Petrovitch poured himself more sake , and proffered the bottle to Oshicora, who politely declined. “But then again, what do I know? I’m lying in a dentist’s chair, in the only building with power in the entire Metrozone, with experimental cybernetics jacked into my brain, talking to a copy of a man who’s ignorant of the fact that he’s been dreaming the destruction of an entire city, while my heart finally fails.” He picked up his drink and threw it back in a single gulp.

“But would you have missed it?”

“Not if I’d have lived to be a hundred. Let me show you how we do things in Russia.” He tossed the cup in his hand, then threw the cup against the bar. It shattered, and shards of china spun away. He got to his feet and slid the emergency card inside his breast pocket.

“Take me,” he said, “to your firewall.”

The scene changed again, instantly and without any sense of motion. They were in an electronics shop, deep in the sideways of Akiba. They were surrounded by densely-packed shelves of components; plastic bins brimming with chips, fans, heat pumps, connectors, cables and cards. At the far end of the aisle, a glass case displayed the very latest hardware.