Perion Synthetics (50 page)

In the distance, the Vinestead demon towered
over her, almost laughing, and Sava wanted nothing more than to stand up and
face it. She didn’t want to let it see her suffer, but there was no command she
could give her avatar to make it move, no way to squeeze more energy from a
depleted battery.

“That is the life,” said Anela. “You fight,
you tire, and then you die. Is today that day?”

“No,” replied Sava.

“What was that? I cannot hear you from down
there.”

Sava looked up; Anela had turned her head away.

“I said no.”

“Still nothing,” said her sister, tapping
her ear.

Sava groaned and put her other hand on the
ground. She twisted onto her knees and fell forward. The floor of the construct
smelled faintly of the Pacific Ocean. The black sludge made room for her nose
as it conformed to her face. Suddenly there was no oxygen; she would be dead in
a matter of seconds if she didn’t pull away, if she didn’t give her imaginary
lungs the air they so desperately needed.

“Sometimes, you have to get close to death
to recognize it. Sometimes, you must be shown what you stand to lose before you
really start to fight.”

Sava’s scream trembled the ground around
her, sending violent ripples throughout the construct. The ache in her muscles
fell away as the flames in her lungs licked at her throat. Stepping out of
herself, she saw the sides of her neck begin to redden. They did not flush;
they glowed as if her flesh had been draped over a roaring fire. Her lungs
flared in her chest, making them visible through her back. The avatar’s black
shirt burned away, exposing the many ridges of her spine poking up through her
skin.

She pushed harder than the construct would
allow, and it was just enough to tear through the constraints of the imagined
simulation. She bolted upright on the examination table, narrowly missing an
overhead spotlight.

A synthetic hand grasped her on the
shoulder.

“Careful, Ms. Kessler,” said the nurse.
“You’ll want to wait for the medication to wear off completely before you try
to walk.”

Sava felt dried saliva at the corners of her
mouth. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.

“How long have I been out?”

“You slept for two and a half hours. Your
body needed it.”

“I told you I only had a few minutes. I’m
supposed to check in with Mr. Perion every hour.” Sava edged herself off the
table. When her legs threatened to buckle beneath her, she gave them a stern
mental command. After a few steps towards the door, she knew it had taken.

“Mr. Perion is aware of your condition,”
said the nurse. “It was his decision to let you sleep.”

Sava stopped at the door. “
How
is he
aware?”

The nurse pulled a section of the butcher’s
paper away from the exam table and tore it off. “He came looking for you
earlier. When he saw you were asleep, he told me to keep an eye on you but not
to disturb you.”

“Where is he now? I need to speak with him.”

The synny nodded towards the door. “He may
still be in the atrium visiting with the wounded.”

“She means glad-handing the proles,” said
Anela.

Sava shook the voice away and stepped out of
the exam room. Her neck felt stiff as she turned side to side to look at the
gurneys lining the hallway. She put a hand up to test the skin; it came back
covered in some kind of sticky balm.

The mood in Medical had shifted during
Sava’s slumber. No longer were the patients being wheeled through the hallways
like go-carts at an indoor track. The nurses, both synthetic and human, walked
with less urgency, moved along by the plaintive cries which came less
frequently. The worst was over; the tidal wave of injured and dying had been
met by a massive synthetic breakwater. Anywhere else in the world, the nurses
and doctors would have been overwhelmed by the sheer numbers.

But not in Perion City. Not in the synthetic
utopia dreamed up by the man with graying hair and impeccable posture, by the
man who now sat hunched over on the low wall of a garden in the atrium, his
face pressed into his hand. For the first time since switching over to his
synthetic body, James Perion looked tired.

Sava knew the feeling all too well. She
navigated the rows of cots until she reached the garden. She sat down beside
the boss of bosses.

“Ms. Kessler,” he said, without looking up.

“Mr. Perion,” she replied.

“Enjoy your rest?”

Sava felt the warmth climb her face. “I’m
sorry. The time got away from me.”

“A lot has been getting away from you as of
late,” said Perion. “I hope this isn’t becoming a new habit of yours.”

“Absolutely not,” she replied, trying to
convince herself and Perion simultaneously. “Everything is under control. I’ve
neutralized all of the aggregators and restored the synthetics to normal
operation, as you can see.”

“
You
restored them?” asked Perion.
“So Robert Gantz and Cynthia Mesquina had nothing to do with it?”

Sava’s stomach twisted. There was no way he
could have known that, unless…

She sought out a specific cot in the atrium
and to her complete lack of surprise, it was empty. Cyn was gone.

“I would have put everything back,” said
Sava. “Once I had them contained, I was going to clean up the signal. So either
way…”

“They came back,” said Perion. “My son came
back to stop the destruction of the city and its people. If they had escaped,
how long would you have let the synthetics run amok before calling them off?”

As long as it took, thought Kaili.

“I didn’t expect there would be this much
collateral damage,” admitted Sava. “The city was more dependent on synnies than
I realized.”

“It surprised me as well. I had always hoped
for synthetics and humans to live side by side in a mutually beneficial
relationship, but I never wanted us to be
dependent
on them.”

“You mean us on you?”

Perion sat up straight and surveyed the
atrium. “Yes,” he said, his lips tight. “It’s clear to me that
you
have
become too dependent on the synthetic workforce, at least here in the city. We
were supposed to be modeling real world applications, but no city on earth will
have this level of synthetic saturation, at least not in the near-term. We
reached a critical mass at some point, but none of us saw it. You can’t have an
entire firehouse of synthetics. You can’t have only one doctor and two dozen
synthetic nurses. All machines have the capacity for failure. Even ours.”

“Especially ours,” said Sava.

“Though it’s not always their fault.
Sometimes there is a human failure.”

Sava nodded; she understood it was time to
be humble. “Yes, sir. I accept full responsibility.”

“No,” said Perion. “I signed off on the
idea. This is on both of us.”

Sava followed his gaze over the endless sea
of cots. For a few minutes, neither of them spoke.

“Was it really necessary to kill Robert?”

“You had to do it,” said Anela. “There was
no other choice. Make him understand that.”

“You tell me,” replied Sava. “How many
synthetic James Perions would Mr. Gantz have had to destroy before you
considered him a threat?”

Perion looked down at his hands. “There were
two of us running for so long… I had gotten used to the secondary data stream.
Sensory input from another place in the world, processed independently but
synced to the same consciousness. When Robert terminated that copy, it stopped
the stream. I had forgotten what that felt like.”

“Like losing a loved one?”

“Deeper,” said Perion. “Like I lost a piece
of myself.” He tightened his hands into fists and released them. “Maybe it was
for the better. That part of me had grown dark and bitter. Too strong-willed. Perhaps
Mr. Gantz did me a favor.” He shook his head. “At any rate, this is just a
temporary setback. I will have a new copy imprinted and the stream will resume.
I doubt Robert meant to kill me per se. If anything, he probably recognized the
simple truth that I can’t be killed, and therefore my synthetic instances can
be destroyed without personal risk to me.”

“Any man who points a gun at my head and
pulls the trigger is my enemy,” said Sava. “I don’t have the luxury of
backups.”

“You said I made a threatening move on
Joseph. Robert’s response was to destroy that instance of me to save my son’s
life. I see no problem with that.”

“He shot at me, Mr. Perion. He emptied an
entire clip into Roberta trying to kill me. Punish me if you want, but I stand
by my decision.”

The scene replayed in Sava’s head. No matter
which direction she took the simulation, it always ended the same way. Robert
Gantz would have killed her just as easily as he killed James Perion.

“It doesn’t matter anymore,” said Perion. He
gestured to the cots. “What matters is that we restore order, that we get these
people fixed up and back to work. I imagine we’ll lose a healthy number of them
after this.”

“You could give them bonuses to stay. Hazard
pay or something.”

“Money only goes so far, Ms. Kessler. You
know that. They’ll want someone to blame.”

“I’ll give them someone.”

Anela walked the perimeter of the construct
in Sava’s mind, drawing up the shades on large vidscreens showing footage from
the Spire’s security cameras. The video would back up Sava’s claims that
aggregators acting with terroristic intentions, and with the help of a
traitorous chief of police, had waged a private war on Perion Synthetics, its
property, and its employees. By sabotaging key systems, they were able to bring
down the command and control signal for all synthetics, rendering them mindless
and freeing them from their safety protocols. Only through the tireless efforts
of Perion engineers was order restored, showing once again that innovation and
salvation will always come from within, that no matter what the world throws at
Perion Synthetics, the company will forever endure.

The floor of the construct lit up in the
undulating waves of an American flag as patriotic fanfare on a piano rose to a
crescendo. Sava would make people loathe Robert Gantz and distrust any
aggregator who dared to write one unflattering word about the company. In the
end, the city would be stronger and its citizens more resolute.

It would be Sava’s most epic piece of social
engineering to date. And judging by the smile on Anela’s face, Sava wasn’t the
only person who thought so.

“I want a proposal in my inbox by the end of
the day,” said Perion. He stood and adjusted his pants.

“Yes, sir.”

“Now, if you’ve had enough rest, I would
like you to collect my son and bring him up to my conference room.”

Sava stood. “I sent Cam to look for him
earlier, but I don’t know if they’ve made it back.”

“They just walked in through the north
entrance.” Perion’s eyes drifted to the ceiling as if he were looking through
the sub-levels to the lobby.

“How do you know that?”

Perion tapped the side of his head.
“Multiple streams of sensory data. I had to fill the void with something.”

Total awareness, thought Sava. Was Perion
tied into the building’s entire monitoring system?

“I’ll bring him,” she said, still wondering
how long Perion had been subbing the security feed. Did he have eyes and ears
watching and listening when she leaned in close to Gantz as he drew his last
breath?

“Good,” said Perion. “I need to have a talk
with my boy.”

It took ten minutes to clear the line of people waiting for
an elevator on Medical. The crowd continued to grow behind Sava as she pulled
out her phone, trying to ignore the stories of harrowing experiences from the
synthetic uprising. She sent a quick message to Cam.

Send Joe up to 70.

She left out any explanation as to why she
didn’t want to meet them in the lobby. It wasn’t just the possibility that Joe
might be angry at her; simply being told his father still existed was an
emotional blow Sava didn’t want to witness, not after imagining it for herself.
The scenario played out in the construct, showing Anela succumbing to some
treatable disease, only to be replaced by a synthetic version, which was then
blown away by Robert fucking Gantz, and once again replaced by another synthetic.

Sava wondered if she would lose her mind
from the constant ups and downs or if she would take comfort in the fact that
Anela Zabora would live on forever, an eternal shoulder on which to lean.

“I already will,” said Anela.

The hallway was full of expensive suits and
pleated skirts when Sava stepped out of the elevator on seventy. On the other
side of the well-dressed regiment of Perion lawyers, Cam and Joe stood just
outside the closed doors to the conference room. The son of Perion had paused
as if collecting his thoughts. When Sava caught Cam’s eyes, he shrugged at her
in response.

Finally, Joe opened the door and stepped
back, allowing the legal team to enter first. They filed into the recently
cleaned room; no trace of the aerated Synth J remained. Joe followed the
lawyers in and left Cam holding the door.

The synthetic guards standing beside the
double doors nodded to Sava but put up a hand as soon as she passed.

“Sorry, sir. Perion Synthetics personnel
only.”

Cam raised an eyebrow and looked to Sava.

She returned a shrug.

“Fine, I’ll just wait out here, I guess,”
said Cam, looking around for somewhere to sit.

Joe Perion came to an abrupt stop at the
table as Synth J rose to greet his son. He opened his arms and offered an
embrace. Joe accepted after a few seconds of hesitation.

“He does not understand the gift he has been
given,” said Anela.

As they separated, Perion motioned to an
empty chair beside his. He sat after his son had settled.