vN (25 page)

  Amy thought she understood. It made far more sense, now, that Javier would have so little trouble letting all of his children go: it was the only behaviour he'd ever learned, and in a roundabout way that strategy worked. His and his father's pattern improved with each of his own iterations – he taught them what he thought they needed to know, a little more each time, and in his eyes their skills now ranked above his own. But with lucky number thirteen, he had finally broken that cycle. Most organic parents never had so many chances to unlearn what their own families had taught them.

  "I… I don't know what to say."

  "You don't have to say anything. You don't have to give me that face, either. I was fine. I made friends. Human friends." He smiled more thinly, now. "The failsafe made sure of that. The failsafe made sure it all felt… fine. Nice, even. I mean, sometimes they would hurt each other. The humans. I'd have to intervene. That's sort of a vN's job in the prison environment."

  "Javier–"

  "Don't sit up, your body's still repairing itself." He resumed his examination of the ceiling. "Anyway. What I'm trying to say is that I left him there. And until recently, I had no trouble living with that."

  "What changed?"

  "Everything." He rolled over so that his back faced her. "Go to sleep. We've got a big day at the museum tomorrow."

 

Rory happily instructed them to meet Daniel Sarton near "the pig" at the Pike Place Market. Amy had no idea how they would get there, though. Both the market and any pigs who had once resided there now rested under a thick blanket of water, silt, and destroyed architecture. They all perched above the Pike Street entrance to the museum, in the shadow of a cracked and cloudy solar panel. Below, humans and vN allowed their passes to be checked by a combination of docents and drones before entering the playground that was the first six avenues of the old city. Amy watched them peering into decaying storefronts and adjusting their goggles, or sometimes snapping their fingers so a drone would zoom along to help. They were admitted in waves that fanned out across the empty streets, all of them drawn inevitably toward the wreckage that slumped into the water: the busted tracks, the drunken skyscrapers supported by ugly new pillars, the crumbling asphalt.

  Amy understood a lot about the museum from its visitors. Most of them wore goggles or little blisters over their eyes that looked like bottle caps, and their collision detection seemed way off. They wandered along the street staring at the sky, or at the surrounding buildings, or even the cracked pavement below, but not at anybody around them. Consequently, they only evaded each other at the last minute. In this respect it wasn't very different from the city where she'd grown up, only the people here had a specific reason for not looking you in the eye.

  She guessed that the eye covering had something to do with the museum, though, because occasionally the people around her would stop in the middle of the street, point their gaze at a certain spot, and begin counting years in clear voices: "1880. 1978. 2001. 2032. 2057." Even people with no visible augmentation did this – she guessed their add-ons were inside, or etched on contacts, or broadcast some other way. She wondered if they could even see her. Probably not – if the pop-ups were any indication, they were looking at layers of time. If Amy had the proper augments, she could have downloaded the layers, too, and watched the cycle of damage and repair play out year to year.

  This was the most damaged portion of the city, where the water had swallowed the city and the buildings had slid together. This made the layers very popular. Downloading the visitor's guide confirmed this assumption: there were special vN-friendly layers that animated the stock footage of that damage, rather than showing it raw. This way, none of the visiting vN would failsafe as they watched suffering earthquake victims drag themselves away from the wreckage.

  West of I-5 was where the worst damage had occurred. The buildings there were built on cheap landfill that had basically liquefied during the aftershocks following the first major Cascadia quake. Once those shallow quakes along the Seattle fault line hit, then three sports stadiums, an aboveground viaduct, an underground tunnel, and several then-historic buildings collapsed, disintegrated, or simply sank. A fifteenfoot-high wave rolled across Elliott Bay and washed over the waterfront – itself already a tourist attraction at the time, and populated by families who were dragged through splintering wood rails to the shallows below, where they smothered under roiling water and falling wood.

  The damage was a monument to faulty engineering in the city's early years and the museum aimed to maintain it as such, despite the fact that every year more of the city sloped down into Puget Sound during landslides brought on by excessive rain. The decay had spread uphill from the Sound, radiating from the areas of worst damage to the higher ground where humans fled. Tourists and hucksters roamed freely on open boulevards. They streamed down toward the water adjusting their goggles or pinging their children, who dashed up to them clutching their ears, until proximity sensors on their parents' belts shut the noise off. The air smelled of oily fish and burnt coffee and cake batter. Small carts sold hot scones that bled raspberry jam. Dirty, skinny dogs chased each other across the street; nobody noticed or followed. This wasn't a city, she realized. It was the longest line-up in human history.

  "You'll have to dive somewhere else, and swim the rest of the way," Ignacio said.

  "Swim?" Javier asked. "Really?"

  "Hey, it's not like you have to go with her," Ignacio said.

  Matteo leaned over to Amy. "Dad can't swim."

  "The hell I can't!" Javier folded his arms. "I just don't really like to."

  "If you can swim, how come you didn't teach us?" Léon asked.

  "It's OK," Amy said. "I can teach you. I've had swimming lessons every year. It's tougher for vN because our density is different, but with another vN teaching you, you'll probably learn faster."

  "It's dangerous down there," Javier said. "Things are still crumbling, and the water's toxic–"

  "You don't have to go swimming." Gabriel said. "The pig is visible in 1986. Just head over…" he gestured vaguely west, "there, and you'll find it. The layering will camouflage you from most people."

  "1986?" Javier blinked.

  Gabriel clicked his tongue. "Honestly. How did you get this far? Was it just good looks?" He nodded at Ignacio. "Go get the goggles. I wasn't able to sneak any past the checkout."

  Ignacio gave a distinctly feline expression of annoyance, but stood up and rolled his neck and shoulders before looking around for a place to jump. He adjusted his shirt and checked his jeans and shoes. He fussed with his hair. A smile rolled across his face, then his posture changed, and with it his whole image. Almost instantly, he resembled his father more closely – the stance, the attitude, the walk. If she hadn't known better, Amy could have sworn she was looking at Javier.

  Ricci offered his oldest brother a high-fructose grin. "It always takes Ignacio a minute to put his sexy together."

  Ignacio gave his brother the finger, and jumped off the roof. They leaned over to watch him bounce between two walls before eventually settling on the ground, adjusting his collar, and zeroing in on two giggling human girls across the street. The giggles grew louder and higher a moment later. He turned a corner with them, and their heads were thrown back and their mouths were open.

  "Sexy?" Javier leaned back on his elbows. "That
pendejo
wouldn't know sexy if it came up and bit him."

  "Is your thumb still doing OK?" Amy asked, now reminded of it.

  "I told you, it's fine." He held his hand out and rotated the thumb. "See?"

  "Is that where she got you, Dad?" Léon asked.

  "Well, it–"

  "What was it like?" Gabriel came into Amy's vision. "Did you sense a change at first, or did you notice the traits emerging later? How long was it before they were effective?"

  "Did she eat it all in one bite, or did she chew it off?"

  
"Léon–"

  "I'm just
asking
–"

  "Was it Portia who did it, or you?" Gabriel leaned closer. "Our father says that you remain conscious as Amy even when the other partition takes over, but that Portia also maintains an illusion of awareness–"

  
"It's not an illusion."
Amy covered her mouth.

  
Tell that little bastard I'm as real as he is.

  "She's angry." Javier pointed at Gabriel. "Don't provoke her. Not unless you want to meet her in person."

  "Actually, I think I'd like to," Gabriel said. "I think she means so much for our evolution as a species–"

  "She ate your baby brother," Amy said. "She was the one who did that, not me."

  Gabriel tilted his head. "You ate her first, though," he said. "That seems to be how your clade solves problems. By swallowing them whole."

  "Junior
wasn't
a problem. Portia thought he was dead weight, but–"

  "Of course he was dead weight." Gabriel nodded over at Junior, who currently stood on Matteo's knees. "That one was of academic interest to me as a bluescreen, and a possible example of what could happen to my own iterations, but if it were any other iteration I wouldn't care." He smiled. "You're so different. Your priorities are so skewed. I really hope Daniel is able to get a good look at your networks and see what's going on in there."

  Amy looked up at the blank white sky. It looked like a fine drizzle might start at any moment. Gabriel really was Javier's son. She wondered if either of them would ever understand the similarities they shared, the way their words echoed each other and how their shared principles created such predictable outcomes. All of the Juniors reflected different aspects of their father. If Amy ever iterated, maybe her daughters would be the same.

  
Who says they'll be anything like you?
Portia asked.
You can cry and scream and whine all you want, but they'll be my daughters, not yours.

  Amy shut her eyes. "Yeah," she said. "I really hope he can figure me out, too."

  Ignacio landed beside her in a crouch. He straightened up and handed her a pair of goggles.

  "Thanks." She stood and looked off the edge of the building. "You worked really fast."

  Ignacio jerked his head at Javier. "I learned from the best. There isn't a human alive this guy can't fuck in under two minutes."

  Léon nodded vigorously. "One time in Mexico, we were in this club, and it was like this live show kind of thing, and Dad–"

  "
Cállate tu boca
, Léon," Javier said. "Amy doesn't need to hear all the details."

  Ignacio snorted. "Now you develop some pride? Give it a rest, old man."

  Amy slid the goggles up her nose and coiled their attached buds up into her ears. "Um, well. I'll just be going, then."

  She flung herself downwards, skidding down the side of the opposite building and landing hard on the street. She dusted herself off and headed toward the water. She didn't run, but she flipped up the hood of the sweatshirt the boys had lent her and tried to get away as fast as possible. Above her, she could still hear the boys chattering, and she wanted a distraction. The nearby seagulls' insistent pleas for attention and food helped. The slow clots of shark-eyed tourists didn't.

  She lifted the goggles and said "1986," and instantly the landscape changed: the buildings straightened and the streets lengthened and there were street performers and homeless amputees in wheelchairs. People smoked on the street. They bought newspapers from old metal dispensers, and unfolded them with great difficulty. Tinny, crackly music played from blank-faced players with chunky, shining buttons. Everything was right angles: the cars, the machines, the awnings and outdoor chairs, and the discarded plastic boxes with the two little teeth inside that she couldn't determine the purpose of. There were no curved edges anywhere.

  When she looked at herself, she almost took the goggles off again: the environment had layered her in rubber-toed sneakers, pink knitted things crawling up her calves, odd ripped leggings with stirrups, a zippered leather skirt, and a giant black T-shirt with the word "Pixies" across the chest and a knot tied in the excess material off to one side. Even her hands were all wrong: they wore stupid lace gloves with the fingers cut off. Around her, the others looked the same: pale streaky denim, big black combat boots, skinny trousers with giant cargo pockets, hair that literally stood on end. The right angles repeated in the clothes, too: the older women all had boxy shoulders and pleated pants.

  Amy wove around people staring at storefronts advertising varying kinds of plastic boxes (rectangular black ones with dusty covers and illustrations; little clear ones with different kinds of pictures; thin ones the size of dinner plates) and giant old cars whose hood ornaments she didn't recognize. She found herself walking along the illusion of an angle. Her feet felt no difference, but her eyes said she was sloping down toward glittering water. It was a bit disconcerting. From a distance, though, she spotted a large bronze pig under a red neon sign reading "PUBLIC MARKET". A bunch of people crowded around the pig. Little kids sat on it and squealed. Amy headed straight for it, but a tug on her shoulder stopped her.

  Javier wore a completely white suit with long tails, an openbuttoned shirt, and gleaming shoes. His hair was slicked back into a single wave. Sudden laughter overtook her. He looked like a giant candle, complete with a glossy wick at the top – an increasingly annoyed giant candle.

  "What is it?" Javier asked. Amy only kept laughing. It was the first time she had laughed in at least a week. Now, she couldn't stop.

  Javier stared. "Seriously, what's so funny?"