Up The Tower (20 page)

From Rescue Chopper pilot Karl Hendricks:

At first, the object of the operation was containment. But then the aftershocks hit, and the chasm ripped open, and the Tower began to fall and fall. After it was all said and done, reconstruction was the word of the day.

News records and on-the-scene reporting exists, but all of these are heavily biased. Most of the records available are from Tri-American, which naturally wanted to downplay the scope of the disaster. Its response was, to use limited language, not ideal—ranging from saying that the earthquake didn’t happen, to explaining that it was all the result of an industrial explosion, to claiming that it had been sparked by Groove interference, and then finally by boasting that it had been a celebratory effect of the earth itself in response to, “the awesomeness of the Datawrist 7.”

Groove’s own reporting was heavily biased, attempting to overplay the effects of the disaster (this was hardly necessary, considering its scope, but Groove’s reporting often implied that the whole of the Midwest was at peril and the continent itself at risk of being split in half). Their counter-reporting was so successful, in fact, that it inspired Tri-American to double, re-double, and then triple its rescue and reconstruction efforts at a rate far above its capacity, effectively bankrupting the company in less than five years.

Raj Petoran, who was at the spearhead of the reconstruction efforts, wrote one of the few first-hand accounts we have, goes into detail:

These questions of the reconstruction are delved into with greater gusto by other authors. I myself have been more fascinated with that period of rescue, and more than that, the imminent danger that so many millions of people faced and succumbed to on that terrible day.

Human spirit is a tough thing to get rid of. In the face of danger, most everyone runs. Some freeze. But whether these runners head toward or away from the danger is one of the most basic stumbling blocks in our understanding of good and evil. Do good people run away? Do bad people help? Can one switch from one end of the spectrum to the other?

And these frozen people—are they caught up in this moral dilemma? Has fright simply paralyzed them, or have they been so untrained in the ways of ethics that their body has become caught in stasis—immoveable object versus irresistible force, all of that. But are they at base wanting to help, and fighting the fibers to flee? Are they at base wanting to flee, and fighting the fibers to help?

Questions. Not many answers. Most of the freezers died. Drowned. Crushed. Burned. Not very practical, freezing in the face of a catastrophe. Understandable, though.

The rescuers rescued. If nothing else, it had become their job—and if the mega-corps were good at anything, it was compelling people to do their job.

* * * * *

H
ere is how the morning went for Victor:

He came back from the dead.

Victor had died several times before, or at least he had technically. It was hard for a clone to die all the way—for the body it inhabited to not be usable again.

Here was the problem with just letting Victor die:

Quality clones are expensive.

They are probably the most expensive thing that a person could buy, outside of an entire Alphabet. And an Alphabet, almost by its definition, did not work very well without its other members. Each one served a purpose in protecting the Alpha.

To grow a new clone, a new brain, and then train it for the several years that it required to know all it needed to know, was too expensive. It was cheaper to replace bits of a clone’s body—bones, muscles, brain, liver, spleen, intestines. Whatever needed replacing could be built again with tech or stem cells. Victor had no recollection of his actual deaths happening, and in fact only dim awareness that his parts were not entirely human parts. He understood that there was metal in him, that various aspects of his brain were installed in the way that you might screw in a shelf or a cabinet, except at a very small scale. He understood this in the way that maybe you understand that you have to eat again after you have just eaten a meal that is entirely too large, in that you cannot deny what has always been true in the past, but the conception of it is beyond your lock into reality.

At any rate, that morning, he was in a lab. It was bright, and he was naked and cool, but not cold. There was a breeze coming from somewhere that probably kept people with clothes on very comfortable. He was not comfortable at all.

Someone took his hand and pulled him up. A man with loose dark hair, poorly combed so that he looked balding even though he wasn’t. He looked like Victor, sort of, with golden eyes and a much thicker neck and set of jowls. Victor recognized him immediately.

“Dad?” Victor asked. “Where are we, Dad?”

The man shook his head. “No way, bud. Just the doc.”

He held a tablet in one hand and pressed Victor’s face to it. Long streams of light and information poured over Victor’s brain. Feelings of family were suppressed. The comitatus of the Alphabet was instilled once more. That strange sense of familial familiarity left Victor and was quickly replaced with another more sterile version.

Of course.

This man was Hotel, not Dad. Victor had no Dad. Nostalgia swept through him—not for his father, as he had never had one, but for that feeling that he had possessed one. The feeling that he thought he had a father. The feeling that he was innately worthy of one. Hotel smiled at Victor the way you would smile at a dog, or maybe a kitten that had gotten stuck in a bag.

“All right, Victor,” said Hotel. “How are you feeling?”

“Okay.

Victor looked down at his chest. There was a long patch of circuitry running level with his skin from his navel to his left nipple. It was hard to the touch, ragged.

“I died again.”

“You died again!” Hotel shrugged. “You are a dangerous person, living in dangerous times. It’s a wonder it’s only been eight times, to tell you the truth. You’re very good at what you do.”

“How did it all shake out?”

“Well enough. They dropped in Yankee after you, like they said they would. He mopped them all up. Terror with a minigun, he is.”

“Yankee?” Victor felt drugged, his head swimming. “He makes a mess.”

“
You
made a mess. Propane tanks, indeed! Yankee cleaned the mess.”

Coming back from the dead was always odd for Victor. He wondered if the other clones had to deal with it very much. He had heard once of Juliette dying, but that was it. Every death seemed like a landmark. There was everything before he was revived, and then everything after. After eight times, now, it was a bit hard to keep track of all the complete rearrangements of his self.

Victor banged the desk. “You tell that damn robot that I’m going to crack his shell open if he thinks he’s taking the credit for that one.”

His emotions powered through him. Death to naysayers. Piss on every fool. Put them in a line.

“You can tell him yourself, tomorrow. I'll hide the propane tanks.”

“Tomorrow?”

“We’re all going to an island somewhere. Deep in the Atlantic. I’d tell you where, but I don’t know. Anyway, there’s a mole been found out, and the boss wants to know how deep it goes.”

“Interrogation?”

Hotel nodded.

“Am I part of the team?”

“Your loyalty, at this point, is not questioned.”

“Is Yankee’s?”

That would make him happy. Smacking Yankee around, getting him to look like a coward. Wouldn’t that be fun? A real time of a time. He could shove a propane tank into his stupid mech body and blow him up, just like he had done with that other fellow before getting killed.

“This is serious, Victor. This isn’t a time to play hoorah. You’ve got to get out there and kill that mole.”

The doctor gave him a shot from a small gun-like dispenser. Victor felt his emotions cooling, and then cooling more. Like an glacier on top of the steam pressure building.

That was better. Calmer.

Victor slid off the operating table. Nearby was the tray that held all the steel plates and cybernetics tech that could possibly be put inside of him. Many of them were artificial organs, like a glittering, netted liver that was flexible and slender, capable of easily installing itself.

Across the table was a rack with weapons and equipment. In front was his blue and gray work suit. He put it on. There was new bullet-proofing around the chest from where he got shot. He checked it for a few moments, looking in all the small utility pockets strapped across his chest.

“Is there nothing for explosives?”

“You mean do you have any? Sure. There’s some—”

“No, I mean against it. That was how I died, that time.”

Hotel shook his head. “We didn’t have time for an upgrade like that. You’ve got to get down there and kill Oscar today.”

“Oscar, huh?”

“He was always a little screwy. Mike says he just put himself in so deep that he doesn’t know which team he was playing for anymore.”

“Okay. Which way is out?”

Hotel pressed a button on the wall. The back of the lab opened up into the sky. They had been airborne this whole time. Victor frowned for a moment and grabbed a parachute off the rack.

“Remember,” said Hotel. “Big meeting tomorrow. Try and take care of yourself, okay?”

It will be in-and-out, thought Victor. Of course I’ll be okay.

* * * * *

V
ictor? I’ve finally got the auxiliary speaker turned on. Victor, you have to get out of there. Another quake is coming. Aftershock.

Victor stood up off his knees and was yelled at by the voice in his skull. The voice was probably God. It sounded like God. In front of him, his mama was so angry, so sad. Covering her mouth with one hand. With her toe, she pushed at the dead body that Victor had made for her. There was blood everywhere. Everywhere blood. Was he born? Is this how that happens? He knew there was blood at a birth.

Around him were all kinds of parts of the man he’d killed. Someone being bad to Mom. His thoughts were fuzzy. Was that man Dad? How did it work?

He knew this woman was his mother because she was the very first woman he had ever seen, and more than that, she was the first woman he had ever heard—calling out his n
a
me some many minutes ago when he had the WAKE UP surrounded by all those dead dogs. Those poor dead dogs. Had they been good dogs or bad dogs? A dog could be either, or sometimes both. Morality was difficult for animals, not having the ability to give it to themselves.

Were you born in dogs? Was that how people borned? If he was born today, then he was born beside dead dogs who died on top of him—one whose eyes had the life exit straight of it while Victor’s own life began.

Was it a system like that? Dogs died and a Victor lived?

After the WAKE UP, Victor had not been able to think much. He just ran up the stairs and climbed the walls and tried to find his Mom.

Now, he was thinking a lot. Because now, he had done it. He held his mother tight. She was so small and frightened and that was okay because he would protect her.

He said to her, “Mama, it's all right. I know a lot about killing. We'll be fine.”

And she said, “There's another earthquake coming, Victor. You...your skull said so. I could hear it. It...it warbled out from you. We'll die like Gary's dead. Oh, God, Victor. Gary's really dead. You killed him.”

You need to get to the top of The Tower, Victor. That's the only way you'll make it.

Right, okay. He would listen to God. Was it God? It sounded like Victor's own thoughts. Maybe it was Victor’s brother. Victor knew he had a brother somewhere; knew it in the bones he had that were not metal. The metal bones knew nothing. They had not paid enough attention in class. Paying attention was
important.
He would take his mother and they would get to the top and they would be safe and she would teach him mom-type things, like how to suck milk or to wear pants in a fetching way or to shop at the store for the best kinds of fruit.

“What kind of coconut is the best kind?” he asked.

Parts of his jaw slopped down onto his mother's feet. There was a lot of his skin that was loose in a great many places. She seemed surprised, stepping back from the red and fleshy mess over her shoes. He would let her take care of it. Mom was so good at that sort of thing.

I'm turning up the volume now. Ana? Was that your name? Can you hear me? This is Mike again. You need to get Victor to the top of the building with you if you can. But the data is the priority. His brain is a little screwy right now.  We're trying to fix it.