The Forever Watch (47 page)

Karla once more catches everything except for the part involving Archie.

Yes, you are all Council now.
I can practically feel Karla sneering.
Now I just have to ensure that I am present when you tell your boyfriend that. I want to see the look on his face.

Trying to work here. Are you just dropping in on my head at random, or what?

Two floors away, Karla cackles in the middle of briefing an assault squad.

We work until I pass out in my chair.

 

 

When morning comes, Hennessy bullies me into taking a shower.

Ah. It does feel good, even if it stings where all the fresh emitter surfaces on my body pushed through the skin. My last shower was at Karla's, but then there was the time it took to get here, and then I put in a whole day of work.

When I return, I jerk to a stop. One corner of the room is taken up by a whole team of medics unloading boxes. Monitoring equipment. Circulatory assist pumps, dialysis machines, a mechanical ventilator …

Hennessy hastily shoves his hands their way. Sky-blue partitions rise from the floor.

It is a nice thought. I guess he's forgotten that I see using the ship, so he hasn't really hidden them from me. He's seen what I have under the shades.

“Sorry, ah. They're for … You know. They're getting ready for … later.”

“It's all right.”

It is easiest to forget while I work, so I get back to it. And so do they.

Lyn sips some coffee, taps a space hovering in between us. It lights up, becomes an image of the main bus nexus that links the Analytical Nodes of this section's cluster. It does not look like much—just a pipe half a meter in diameter, cut open, packed full with translucent crystalline data-lines. By now, tablets are wired in awkwardly, and a dozen people are crammed into the space of a few broom closets, trying to re-create the programming of Earth's very best when they refitted this massive alien craft.

Another place, another job, another life. It still comes down to routines. Eating, sleeping, paperwork, workflows, analyses. It is the same. But I am not the same.

“I have our people working on critical functions first, life support, communications,” Lyn informs me as she shows off the newer boards wired into the ancient alien terminals beneath. “At least with almost all of the mutineers up front of us, we've cut off their ability to talk to the ones still in the Habitat. Right now, we can't spare the staff to work on monitoring the Nth Web—it's the Wild West on the Network, with no policing.”

Doing this the old way will take more days than I have left. It is time to show off what Archie can do.

“Prepare to be impressed.”

I stretch my arms up over my head, pop my knuckles, and spend a mere thirty seconds to write out, in pseudo-code, a polite request to Archie to monitor the Habitat's virtual space for all communications by and between Archivists. Oh, and to handle all midlevel interface between officer commands and the ship's functions, pretty please.

With a happy ping of acknowledgement, all the status displays on the monitors in front of us and the hovering ones visible only in our heads flicker, and the colors of the characters and the frames change from monochrome orange to a dazzling array of subtle hues.

“What the heck! How are you—Oh. Wow.”

Before us, we see a representation of the hundreds of thousands of data accesses currently occurring in the Habitat. All the stars in the sky. As the minutes pass, flowers of angry red bloom around clusters of points in the display, labeling which ones are under the direct use of the mutiny. And on every terminal display, simple graphical menus appear.

Lyn claps me on the shoulder, “Amazing. How did I ever score more than you in the programming tests?”

The speed of it shocks even me. I thought that would take Archie hours, not an instant. “Uh. Haha. You were just lucky, I guess.”

With my eyes blocked off by bandages and reflective lenses, it is easy to hide my surprise. Lyn is a great mind and a better programmer, but understanding people is not her strength. She cannot tell how uncomfortable her naked admiration and envy makes me.

Come to think of it, that day of tests was on the day I was so stressed out from being late. A day when it seemed as if everything went wrong. Would things be any different if I had woken up on time that morning? Would I have made Officer Command? Would I perhaps even be in the exact same position that I am in now?

“Uh. Now, I'll just get a summary of those hits and send it off to Karla. What next?”

“Wow.” Lyn shakes her head. I feel a bit bad. I'm cheating. I'm not nearly as good as she thinks. It's Archie. And Archie became like this on her own. Well, I guess I did help her along. I provided the seed, and the rest was the Builders, and the statistical bolt from the blue that caused Archie to self-organize from the chaos of my code mingling with that of the aliens.

Karla messages us with orders to disrupt all recruiting efforts, and to merely monitor communications that are between Archivists.

“So”—Lyn looks at me expectantly—“you going to impress me some more?”

“Sure.” Archie makes it all too easy. And she likes this, impressing them, being useful and seeing up close the delight on people's faces.

After each completed job, there is something else to do. We have to trace the contaminated food stocks so that they can be removed from circulation and identify appropriate vectors for subtly administering antipsychotics to the entire population. We have to specify and delegate less immediate but just as important concerns to the multiple specialists we are in charge of. Getting life-support maintenance groups working again in the Habitat. Reestablishing basic services. Giving marketing and ad teams tools for handling propaganda to defang the seditious information floating around on the Net and to ease the fear and panic of the masses until the Behavioralists can get around to Adjusting everyone.

I am dying. I need to fill every moment with something. While we work, I work with music. When I rest, I read my favorite stories to Archie. When I sleep, I dream, and Archie is there.

Archie, forever eavesdropping on my thoughts, pings curious chirps into my auditory sense. That's right. Nothing is stopping me anymore. I brace myself, frame my desires into simple instructions, and ask her.

Leon?

Who the … Hana!

In a sudden, startling shift of perspective, Archie feeds me visuals of Barrens's immediate vicinity.

He is standing in an alleyway between two low brick buildings. Something in the way he is leaning in the shadows makes him seem less noticeable. He is wearing an ordinary tan coat, and it is raining. He looks perfectly comfortable there, immovable, strong, despite the water streaming down his face. Thick clouds of dirty, dust-laden mist blow along the streets, but at least there is gravity where he is.

How are you talking to me? Aren't you on the new Bridge?

I am. Archie is helping out.

Wow.

His face eases into a smile, for just a moment. Before it goes grim. Peering around the corner, his eyes narrow. His silhouette is outlined in faint red, nearly unnoticeable through the mist.

Ah, Hana. I see my current assignment. I'll … I'll message you when I can. And Waitani said I can see you, after a couple more.

He sends me a packet of emotions and sensory feedback. How it feels to him to hold me. The way I taste when he kisses me. The smell of my skin.

And I reply too. But I leave out how miserable I am, just as I know he is leaving out how terrible his “assignments” make him feel.

Bye.

Bye.

I could watch. He would not know. But he would not want me to see what happens next. Karla has made no secret of the assassinations Barrens is carrying out.

I ask Archie to drop the link and then think of better things through a sudden bout of intense pain that has me almost falling out of my seat, while Archie's image behind me jumps up and down in alarm. It passes.

I'm fine. We knew this would happen, kiddo.

That look again. Defiance. I sense her out there, thousands of copies of her processes searching, searching.

The hours turn to days and the headaches come and go. If I did not know I was dying, I would think it is from the mundane fatigue of work. Now, every discomfort and weakness seems to me another symptom, another sign of how little time I have left. As tempting as it is, I try not to have too many conversations with Barrens. It makes me ache, his not knowing what's happening to me. I need for that to happen in person. I need to be able to hold him when he finds out.

Another morning of going over reports and analyses and Lyn notices me swaying. “Gosh. Go take a break. I think I have a handle on how to talk to Archie now. I can do this and boss around the teams under Jordan, Hideo, and Melinda. Get something to eat. The real kitchens aren't staffed yet, but the supplies are three doors down from us.”

I go. In the middle of opening up a can of unidentifiable processed pseudo-meat, I get a message from Hennessy.

Hey, you. Report is ready. Where are you? Oh, no, no, darling. You're not eating that garbage. Let me fix something for you.

That would be lovely, James. Yes. Please. I'm tired.

And all the while, Archie keeps the nanites spreading slowly through me. Fighting to keep me here, alive.

32

I know I am asleep. I know it's a dream because I've got my hair again, and I'm in that ridiculous dress from the Yule party, and laughing with my friends while we watch Web feeds of kids putting on a play. And Karla is here too, dolled up in a dress of black leather and bloodred. And there is Archie.

Is that you, Archie, or am I just dreaming you up?

Mischievous smile. She becomes seventeen, flickers into a dress of silver sequins and lamé, a dress I couldn't afford at that age but wanted. Sticks her tongue out at me, mimes drinking from the glasses of mead that are everywhere.

Huh. Because of the Implant, lucid dreams are much more concrete and pliable.

Let's ditch this party then, and play!

I am still asleep. And then Archie pulls a part of my consciousness along, into the Nth Web. She takes me to a great big chamber full of recycled plastech ingots.

Let's see what we can do together, Archie!

Archie and I play. We create. Cities rise out of the ingots, floating castles in the sky. I could have done them without Archie, but Archie adds ten thousand tiny moving men and women striding back and forth, sitting, talking, playing in the cities I've made.

Too bad there isn't a beach here.

Then Archie blows my mind completely and manifests sand underneath us, and water, and waves, and a blue sky and the sun. That's … not plastech manipulation.

Some have managed that while hopped up on Psyn, their consciousness twisting reality for all of the brief seconds before their brains died from overdose and psi-burnout.

Archie can do it and sustain it.

It's lovely, really it is. But we should stop. That's got to be using so much power.

She is a good child, she is. She pouts, but undoes the psychic manifestation anyway, puts away our toys.

I need to think long and hard about how much more Archie will be able to do.

 

 

“Up!”

I hear Karla loud and clear.

The bed is not warm enough. I never feel warm enough now. My mouth feels and tastes foul. Thrash around under the sheets. Feel trapped. Confined.

Again, Karla moves me around, like a doll. Blankets off. On my feet. My internal chronometer announces that I have been asleep for six hours. The deck sensors let me know that most of the Bridge staff is asleep.

How many more times will I wake up?

A rush of fear gets me gasping, hyperventilating. I'm going to die. Archie is with me, and she feels the fear too, and she plays music she thinks might soothe me, reminds me of our playing games in my room.

Time is running out for me and I can't waste it.

Thanks, Archie. I'm fine now.

Karla starts to drive my body, make me stand.

Captain Waitani, get out of my head! I don't need this!

She looks at me, quirks a peculiar smile. “Very well.”

We eat in the private kitchenette Hennessy built into my offices. By now, he has made up several chairs just the way I like them, with that curve that properly supports my lower back, and not too plush in the seat.

The food in front of us is hers, not Hennessy's. He is still sleeping in his own bed, now that he's finally had time to make proper bedrooms for himself, Lyn, and me. A salad with onions and cherry tomatoes and crumbly white cheese and peppers and orange slices, porridge with honey, coffee that is thick and syrupy. It is almost too good. She ought to have been a cook, not one of the thought police.

Next, to the bathroom. Hennessy has made up a separate, larger one for me. I practically have a hotel suite in my workplace. It twists in me again, the awareness of death. That giant shower is that size not for luxury, but because in the future assistants will have to help me for everything, when I can no longer help myself. I want to rush through as much as I can, yet I also want to feel it all and take it slow and savor the passing moments of being alive.

When I brush my teeth, at least my gums do not bleed now that I've switched to softer bristles. Doing it with
touch
would cause just as much damage, and a brush takes less effort. Yes. No taste of blood. I am still alive. I'm okay.

I strip off my borrowed clothes and shower while Karla's presence stalks back and forth outside. She is setting aside clothes for me. By the time I pull on fresh underwear and a gray business dress, I am about as steady as I can be for another day.