Watching Yute (47 page)

“
Roger that,
Sir.”

~~~

There might be a lot of money to be
made with those cockfights, Kirison thought. As long as he had to
be under the radar anyway, he may as well profit from it. He wasn't
sure about all the technical details of the fight he had seen some
time ago, but he was pretty sure he could engineer a
champion.

He needed cash. Keeping the nanites and
himself fed had depleted his funds quite some time ago, although he
was getting pretty darn good at shoplifting.

What a lifestyle change this had been.
And it was all Horad's fault. Or Jonathan Coll's. In contrast, he
found himself feeling actually grateful to Mr. Book, which was a
condition he found terribly uncomfortable.

More comfortable than having to urinate
battery acid mind you, but not by much.

It was starting to get dark out. Rush
hour was over earlier than expected though. And rather suddenly.
Maybe there was a football game on somewhere. The streets were
quiet. Really quiet. Three A.M. quiet.

He looked around for a corner store to
swipe a snack from. With things so quiet, shoplifting would be
especially difficult.

Wait a second. Things are
closed.

Everything's closed. That's not
right.

Screw the snack, he had to get out of
there. Go find a chicken, and get to work. He quickened his pace,
looking for someone. Anyone. There was no one around anywhere. He
searched for a few blocks, but everything was closed, and nobody
was to be seen.

And then the streetlights went out,
along with lights from nearby buildings. It was dark. Very dark.
Only the last embers of the sunset leaked their way to him through
the streets.

He spotted movement. Or did he? Half a
block away. It was so bloody dark. This was wrong. It was all
wrong. He began to run. He had to find some light, an open store,
or just any person.

The darkness ahead seemed to move,
revealing two female soldiers in desert army fatigues, one holding
a spear. He stopped cold, and could now see the darkness was armed.
Heavily.

The unarmed desert soldier spoke to the
spear holder. “It's good I came.” she said. Her soft voice could be
clearly heard in the surrounding silence..

“
Who are you people?!”
Kirison yelled, looking around. The soldiers in black were all
around him, positioning themselves silently.

“
I am Leftenent Cassidy
Stanton.” Cassidy took the spear into both hands. “Your friend
killed the love of my life, because of lies you told
him.”

Kirison felt panic grab him. “I didn't
tell Horad to kill anybody! He was just supposed to deliver a
signal! You can't blame me for that Aguei bastard's
crimes!”

Cipriana stepped up beside Cassidy. She
grabbed the head of the spear, and dragged her other hand across
the edge, bleeding grey. “Very good that I came.”

Kirison's eyes widened, watching the
surge of nanites seep out of Cipriana’s palm as she closed her
fist. Cassidy pulled the spear away in confusion.

“
You have your own crimes to
answer for, don't you, Kirison?” Cipriana called out.

His own damn nanites! They were behind
it all? “It's you! It's all your fault!” Kirison made the decision,
and gave the order to the nanites surging in his own muscles. They
moved him faster than he could have on his own. He jumped backwards
against Keith, and in one fluid motion, Kirison yanked the rifle
away from Keith and held him up as a human shield.

The ghost’s voice resonated in
Cipriana’s head. “:::May I?” Upon thinking of approval, before she
could even form the word “Go” in her mind, her body was in
motion.

The decision was already made.
Cipriana’s hand whipped out for Cassidy’s gun. This was not a stand
off; the ghost had no intent of pointing a gun and talking. The
trigger was already being pulled as the weapon was being aimed,
firing the moment the gun was in the desired position.

As the bullet began its flight out of
Cassidy's gun, Kirison's human mind was still only processing
Cipriana’s sudden motion. The bullet passed by Keith’s head, and
sailed into Kirison’s eye.

Kirison staggered back and Keith pulled
himself free, along with his rifle. Keith jumped out of the way,
smearing Kirison’s blood off his cheek. With the exception of
Kirison and the ghost, everyone expected Kirison to fall flat on
the ground, dead.

With a bloody mess where his right eye
used to be, and a gaping exit wound in the back of his head,
Kirison smiled. “Haha! I felt that for a split second! It hurt like
a bitch!” This was no longer the original Kirison speaking. The
original Kirison was dead. This was a back-up speaking.

“
Take him down, take him
apart.” Cipriana muttered. The Storms quickly changed position; a
rough semi-circle in front of Kirison.

Kirison saw the looks on everyone’s
faces. “I realized one day, I was living up here too much!” He
tapped his temple a few times. “You can’t put all your eggs in one
basket! Redundant backups are your friend! Redundancy is a life
saver! Redundancy is a life saver! Redundancy is a life saver!
Redundancy-“ He went on laughing, cackling, marveling at the nanite
system preserving his own mind.

Cassidy leveled her spear, debating her
ability to decapitate. Would lobbing his head off even work?
Cipriana put her uninjured hand out in front of Cassidy to hold her
back, and stared Cassidy in the eye. “Don’t touch him.” She crossed
and uncrossed her fingers, over and over. “We are in agreement. He
has to be put down. He’s a zombie.” Cipriana raised her clenched
fist, staring intently at it.

Kirison noticed Cipriana and Cassidy,
and pulled himself away from the amusement of his own genius. He
pointed forcefully at Cipriana. “You've been the problem all
along!” He dashed forward, ready to attack.

“
Storms!” Cassidy yelled,
“Open fire! Take him apart!”

A deluge of bullets battered Kirison,
jerking him around, ripping red, wet chunks from him, shattering
bone. He tried to run, as if against wind. An upper arm fell loose
behind him. His remaining eye wore an expression of amazement as he
fell onto a storm drain.

Pain could not reach him. Nothing
remained of him that could feel pain. The back-up mind could only
monitor damage. Seeing his body ripped apart around him, all he
could think of was how surreal it all was.

He couldn’t run. Not as he
was.

He knew his original brain was dead
already. The body he lived in was no longer needed. He had to
accept it. The Kirison that he used to be was dead. He had noting
to lose but meat.

:::Kirison Support Colony:
Exit

“
Alright! Alright already!”
Cassidy stood, stunned, staring at the mangled mess that used to be
a person. “Cease fire! Zombie or not, he’s not going anywhere!”
Kirison was bleeding into the storm drain. She couldn’t look at the
mess anymore. She averted her eyes and looked over to
Cipriana.

Cipriana stared at Kirison and said
calmly, “He’s running. The ghost will follow. Burn the blood on the
street.” She opened her clenched fist to reveal a perfectly round
grey ball, sitting on the fresh slash across her palm. She walked
over to Kirison’s body, and dropped the ball into the storm
drain.

Cassidy pointed at the splatter around
the body with one hand, and at a gas station half a block away with
the other. “Gasoline! Douse it anywhere he may have bled, then burn
it!” A few of the Storms ran to get gasoline

:::Kirison Support Colony Nanite
#83F872BE: Disconnected.

:::Kirison Support Colony Nanite
#83F872BE: Seeking peers.

Countless nanites floated around in the
sewer waters, trying desperately to find each other after draining
out of Kirison’s body on command. Each held a sliver of Kirison’s
mind. A sliver of a copy of it, to be specific.

As more and more of the ‘support
colony’ found each other, it became able to think simple
thoughts.

“
:::I am.”

“
:::I am more than just
nanites.”

“
:::I am Jacob
Kirison.”

“
:::I used to be
flesh.”

While it took only a couple minutes to
come to these realizations, the more it knew, and the more nanites
that were part of the rebuilt colony, the faster its thought
processes were. The grey mass congealed in the running water, soon
surpassing the size of a dime.

Thoughts came faster and faster, and
functions of Kirison as a person came into being. One of these was
a human sense of impatience. Yes, it had only been a couple
minutes, if that, but through the lens of digital speed, those
minutes were agonizingly slow.

Kirison’s mind had reached all the
wisdom of a five year old, and found no way to express what would
have been a temper tantrum. The other nanites were coming along too
slow!

He wondered if enough of the nanites
made it down the drain. There were several complete backups of his
mind in his body, but the Storms’ bullets didn’t really give him
enough time to ensure that one complete set made it down the drain.
He already had redundant copies of a few thousand parts. What if he
didn’t come together entirely? What would be missing?

He struggled sightlessly with all of
his tiny physical strength to find as many of his nanites as he
could in the chaos of the flowing water.

His efforts were interrupted by a
surprise.

“
:::Hello, Kirison. Or do
you prefer 'Samuel'?”

Who the hell was that!? The signal was
from something in physical contact with him, and it was speaking
his code language.

“
:::I’m Kirison!” he replied
bluntly with his current level of intelligence. Even as he spoke,
he continually collected more nanites, restoring more of his
mind.

“
:::Kirison, then. Do you
know me?” asked the ghost.

“
:::I can’t see you!” In his
mental soup, Kirison didn’t realize that he didn’t have eyes. It
also didn’t occur to him that the voice probably didn’t have much
more of a body than he did.

“
:::I believe you created
me, Kirison.”

That wasn’t right, he never created
anything with a voice. “:::I don’t think so, who are
you?”

“
::: I don't know if you
ever gave me a name. I am most commonly called ‘ghost’ lately. I
was dropped into the drain as one whole unit, giving me a
significant tactical advantage over you. I was originally
programmed by you to attach to minds and monitor many aspects of
the Yute temple. Why?”

No, it couldn’t be. It shouldn’t behave
like this! It shouldn’t even still be functioning! “:::Horad killed
you!!”

There was a long silence, dirtied by
soft signal noise. It gave Kirison time to realize that no other
parts of himself had joined up for quite a while. The ghost broke
the silence.

“
:::Horad tried to kill me.
He only succeeded in killing someone important to me.”

“
:::Important to you?!” If
Kirison had a mouth or lungs, he’d have scoffed. “:::You don’t have
the capacity to give a shit!”

“
:::As well, they were
important to many other people, who are also important to me. It
has caused much suffering. Likely even more suffering, by radiating
out via social networks.”

Kirison felt a piece of himself
removed. Physically gone, or perhaps just turned off. “:::What’s
going on!?”

“
:::You blame Horad for
those deaths. I blamed myself for a while, because Horad came for
me.”

The thing had a conscience? “:::You
weren’t programmed to hurt any of the test subjects! You even made
their lives more enjoyable with a mild narcotic effect!”

“
:::Is this how you
justified creating me to infect them?”

Kirison couldn’t think of a reply. He
had trouble remembering the last thing he had said. More and more
of his nanites were becoming useless to him.

“
:::Horad was given a great
deal of mercy,” the ghost continued, “:::Maybe being human
qualifies him to receive mercy.”

“
:::I used to be flesh! I am
Jacob Kirison!!” He felt panic, and little else.

“
:::You used to be flesh.
You used to be human. You used to have rights to mercy.” The
ghost’s tone was peaceful and sombre. “:::I cannot kill you.
Bullets already killed you. You are not Jacob Kirison. Jacob
Kirison is dead.”

“
:::I AM MORE THAN JUST
NANITES!” Kirison shouted silently.

“
:::You’re more of a ghost
than I am. I really should find a proper name. Some are born with
souls, some achieve a soul, some have souls thrust upon them. I
wonder were I stand?” The ghost mused existence while taking apart
Kirison’s, ripping nanite after nanite off of him, and destroying
each one. Erasing its memory and then crushing its microscopic
physical form.

Kirison screamed as his mind was
dissolved, “:::I AM!”

“
:::No.” The ghost said,
soon alone in the water, “:::Not anymore.”