Up The Tower (13 page)

The people there did not all get away in time.

“Holy cow,” Gary breathed, coming up over the edge. “How about that?”

* * * * *

T
he last time Samson had seen his sister, the absolute last time, it had been a rather nice day.

Several years back, before Crash and Petrov really started clamping down on security, there had been a picnic and park area on the top of several conjoined buildings adjacent to the Tower, easily accessed by a long skywalk on the fortieth floor. Vertical Park. Those buildings were torn down, now, the skywalk scrapped.

Samson couldn’t remember all that much of the day. He was four at the time, after all.

Sometimes he would recall his age at certain events and be surprised. When the TeriFun holostick franchise debuted, for instance, he remembered spending hours and hours with the cheap knockoffs that his parents could afford—the ones that came out just days after the real thing, mass-produced in Junktown labs and factories.  These community factories pooled money together and bought one TeriFun stick, and then tried to replicate it with the 3D workshops they made for themselves. Two to three dozen factory workers  were killed from the anti-piracy controls on the device. Tampering with the patented product, or at least tampering incautiously, fried some of these entrepreneurial souls with enormous electrical current.

Samson got one as early as he did because his father had a friend who worked in such a factory. Part of the friend's pay was taking home the knockoffs and selling them.

Later on, when he looked back on it, he was a bit surprised to find out that he was only three when they came out. That he had been disassembling, rebuilding, adding on at that age. It seemed not so long ago—it seemed like his brain had only really turned on when he was seven or maybe eight, but that was long after his parents’ death, and so that didn’t make sense.

Sometimes—most times, in fact—he wished that his brain worked about half as well. That he could forget like other people forgot, that he could stop problem-solving, that he could stop rationalizing, that every last emotional output he had didn’t have to make every kind of sense in the world to him. Why couldn’t he just let things go?

Anyway. He and his family traveled out to Vertical Park and had a nice lunch.

There were other families there. The weather was too nice for just one family to be out on their own. That was okay, though. They had their own small plot and laid out a checkered blue blanket next to the bench. Dad took the bench—he was always having trouble with sitting down on the ground. The drugs in his system stiffened him up. He didn't even lie down to go to sleep for fear of not being able to get to work on time. His mother, she was affected too—her vision. She couldn't see in the dark, anymore. Her eyes adjusted to nothing.

Samson's sister had always had features too severe for her to be considered pretty. He remembered thinking she looked like a statue, the way she presided over the picnic, not talking or moving. She was ten at the time.

He approached her as his mother and father readied the food, throwing a fluffy toy at her. Trying to get her to play. She picked it up sadly, tossing it from one hand to another. They were on the edge of the blanket, near the edge of the building. Small plants sat in the stone ring around the park.

“I don’t know how much you understand,” Ore said to him. “How much do you understand?”

He shrugged. “Lots.”

“I’m leaving, all right? They don’t know yet.”

Samson nodded. “You're gone lots.”

“I don’t mean like that. I mean I ain’t going to get back into the Tower much at all. I got to run my own way, all right? So you ain’t gonna see me much. But I’ll still be with you.”

“How?”

“I...don’t know.” She shook her head. “I wish I brought something. I wish...”

Samson had something. He had it in his pocket. He had made it for himself, but that was okay. He could make more. It was a small metal acorn, sort of. Little dents pockmarked it—a metal asteroid.

“Here,” he said.

He twisted the top half of the nut and then pressed it inward. Immediately it sprang in the air, unfolding itself. When it landed again, the acorn had become a little man. It was a little man with big flappy arms and legs and part of an acorn on its head, but a man nonetheless.

Samson flipped a little switch on its back, and the acorn man lay down serenely and folded back up.

Ore took it, smiling small like she did.

Mom opened up the basket then, and they all set about to eating. Ore made jokes and laughed at the jokes of others.

The next day, she was gone, and he came to believe after a lot of crying and a lot of questioning that he would never see her again.

* * * * *

I
s that what you sweatin’, baby? That you gonna die? Don’t sweat that, baby. We all gonna die. You could die just later today.

You won’t die, though? Right, Crash?

Nah, baby. You done me good. I ain’t gonna die.

“Hello! Partner-Samson! Are you okay?”

Samson woke, his body hurting.

He was alive. And without expecting to, all he felt was disappointed.

The walls of his room were full of holes, and The Tower around him was definitely broken—or breaking, with shelves of concrete rolling down on themselves. Pipes and wires pushing out like metal-plastic pasta from the walls and floors. Everything unsteady.

“Yeah,” said Samson. “I think so. Yeah.”

It was dark, and Samson’s vision was still blurry. Probably he took a blow or two to the head. He patted himself for blood, injuries, and found nothing—nothing on the outside, anyway. All his bones were sore, rattled to the core.

Samson tried to stand. Partner gripped his waist and helped him up.

“There you go!” said the copbot. “That is fantastic! You're standing! Safety protocol Seven-Eight-Eight worked to a beauty!”

“Safety protocol...?”

“You will recall the metal parachute I mentioned. Very useful. Better for rubble and debris than Two-Four-Five-Seven. Although, I will reveal that it's been a subject of debate in the database—”

“That's all right. That's enough.”

Samson stepped through the broken pile of his room. “We've got to get out of here.”

“Yes! We are in concordance. Let's do it. On my mark, then.”

With exultant French horns blaring from his shoulder-speakers, Partner slammed into the wall and opened a hole.

“Follow!” it called. “Quickly, follow!”

The ceiling began to rain down. Samson hopped through the opening just as his lab closed up, more debris from the floors above landing there.

All his work. His whole life, right there in that room. Gone. He wouldn't go back in again. For a moment, he leaned against Partner's metal frame, staring in disbelief. Trying to plan some way through the rubble. What if they went around to the window, somehow, went outside? He could leap, maybe, and...

No. No, it was all gone.

“God.”

“I am not familiar.” Partner shrugged. Apologetic. “I understand many problems surround him.”

“No, I wasn't...it's an expression. I don't know.”

Samson hadn't had much reason or discourse when it came to god. God was a word, not one he knew all too well.

The wall was gone in the room they were in. An office of some kind. Samson stepped near the edge, looking out. God was a word, and he knew it better now.

God was the earth folding up like some deep maw. God was fires in buildings and a dam that whipped and folded, ready to bust. God was a mass of people dying and dying and dying.

Bigger than what he could ever know or understand. That was God.

“You had better step away,” said Partner. “Winds get choppy this high.”

“Yes.”

Samson walked away, taking Partner's hand.

“Yes, okay.” His mind cleared some. “Upstairs. We have to get upstairs. To the top. There's an escape pod, okay? We have to reach it. That's the only way we'll live.”

Partner grinned. “Nothing like a good plan.”

The copbot set to clearing the debris from the front of the room. Samson watched it, not sure how to help. It was all too heavy for him to move—giant chunks of concrete, great steel beams. The walls folded down and in, all the bones of the Tower’s heavy body sticking out at odd angles. All of it sharp, busted, ready to hurt.

“You've saved my life many times now, you know.”

“Yes!” said Partner. “It is more fun every time. You are good to save, Samson-Partner. No doubt the database will swell with accolades for our many episodes.”

If there was a kind of balance to the world, Samson did not know that he had seen it. Mostly what he had seen was that he lived, and everyone close to him died or ran away and then died. Meanwhile, he kept ticking. Meanwhile, he almost killed a robot that had saved his life three times.

“Have you ever killed anybody before, Partner?”

Somehow, it would have made Samson's life easier if Partner had.

“Have I?” The copbot tossed down a huge block of concrete. “No. Not as such! I have much, much data, however.”

“The data of other copbots?”

“Yes. The database. We are supposed to remember and learn.”

“So you know about killing?”

“I do.”

“Do you remember dying many times, also?”

“Yes. From what I have seen, it happens quickly. A flash.”

“That's because you—they, I mean—are all exploding.”

“You have no flash when you die?”

Samson hadn't considered it much. “I don't know.”

“It is comforting. This is the database letting you know there is something else coming. There could not be a flash without a light, first.”

The copbot continued to unload the debris from the door. Samson could feel his courage building.

“Partner, you know, I have to tell you something. I—”

With a short trumpet blare, Partner pummeled through the last of the debris.

“Ah! Done. To the top, yes! It will be no time, now!”

The moment had passed. Samson followed Partner through the dust and out into the remains of the hall.

* * * * *

V
ictor was born in a large tube a little more than ten years before the day of the quake. He was grown for espionage and killing. Mostly killing.

In the dichotomous world that Groove and Tri-American had created, there were several rich men, a few filthy rich men, and some men with so much money that their filthiness could not possibly be contained appropriately with words. The Citizens of the world—a mere five percent of the population—held ninety-five percent of the world’s wealth. That is rich enough. But then, there are the Shareholder Citizens, who consist of five percent of
that
Citizen population, and hold ninety percent of
that
wealth. And then, there are the Executives, possessing another ninety-percent slice.

There were twenty of these last kind of men, these Executives. Of these twenty, ten had Alphabets.

An Alphabet was a series of twenty-five clones, each modeled off the original Alpha, or Executive. Each clone was designed for specific purposes—a Delta worked in a house as a cook and steward, for example, while others like Hotels and Indias were redundancies of the same function (to serve as emissaries of the Alpha for business negotiations overseas).

In this way, an Alpha could easily live his whole life without ever worrying about business again, rest assured in the fact that all decisions made in the future by his clones would, in essence, be made by him. There were exceptions—the exact science of cloning was sometimes not quite as exact as advertised. Clones could get a little wonky. Oscars and their loyalties, for example, or Limas with their constant philandering.

Victors were killers, though, through and through. As a rule of thumb, the higher-up on the Alphabet a clone was, the more important his job.

For the first two years of his life, Victor trained in combat. It was literally all he knew: hand-to-hand, firearms, energy weapons, knives, staves, all of that. The next three years were language—English, Chinese, Indonesian, Slavic, German, Russian, and Turkish.

He was not sure even which executive he was a clone of—he just knew that he was a clone, that he worked for Groove, and that his Alpha had a far reach.

After five years, he was deemed ready to get to work. When he went to sleep at night, he was given mindprobes full of updates on his Alpha’s life, as well as the general history of the world. His memory was free of embarrassment, shame, or anxiety—all he had ever experienced was failure and then trying to succeed afterward. If he was told to do something, he did it.

He—and really this is rather important—possessed no sexual drive of any kind.

People had told him he looked something like his Alpha, except for the nose, which was too broad, or the forehead, too severe. This mismatching was on purpose. The whole idea of a Victor was to travel in relative anonymity. So he was handsome, but not too handsome. He was intelligent, but not clever; understanding and serene, but never jovial. An ideal travel mate on a long journey, except for when he had to slip away to shoot someone in the head.

Victor’s first mission was on a small Pacific island, Tuvalu. In twelve years, scientists predicted, the island would be completely flooded over. This was a result from the climate change which pervaded over the whole of the earth. The rich—who were, besides the locals, the only people who could even afford to be at Tuvalu anymore—regarded the predictions as fairly accurate. In fact, the day the predictions had been published, Citizens from all over the earth bought up tiny plots of Tuvalu land at enormously high prices. Once the sales were final, these Corporate Citizens began placing yachts on their new plots of land. When the final flood of seawater finally rolled in, they would be partying away, announcing to the earth in an orgasmic blaze of self-importance that the last human mark on the land would be their pleasure.

Victor’s target didn't live in a yacht, though. He lived in a hut, shacking up with a beautiful young woman who had no idea what the world was outside of what she saw on the local bar’s screen, the only one on the island. All that bar received from the rest of the world was sports and commercials.