Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 190, page 8
part #190 of Clarkesworld Series
“Well, you should be, for being so reckless. Have I taught you nothing?” the inventor snaps. The old man scavenges among his shelves and pulls down six different spray bottles before returning to the table. One by one he sprays down everywhere the boy was cut, and each one seems to sting more than the last until he is barely managing to hold back tears. “Let those soak in for a bit, then I’m going to suit you up in an EMP wrap to kill off the nanotech.”
“And the warbot?”
“That’s going to take a bit more,” the inventor concedes.
“They’re unstoppable,” the boy knows, everyone knows. “They’re going to have to euthanize me, before I turn into something terrible.”
“Do I strike you as someone who gives up so easily?” the inventor snaps. “If you’ve got no will to fight it, I should have just left you in that ditch.”
“Maybe you should have. How did you even find me in the first place?” the boy asks.
“The box AI,” the inventor says. “I built a homing signal into it that had malfunctioned before you stole it, probably a bad solder and an unstable connection. Falling must have jarred it just right, and I went looking for it as soon as the signal reappeared. Lucky you.”
“Lucky me,” the boy says but doesn’t feel lucky at all. “Now what?”
“Now we see if whatever Dominionist hack spun out the warbot had any actual talent. It’d be nice to have a challenge, for once,” the inventor says. “We should call your mother and let her know you’re here, then let’s get you fixed up. It’s probably gonna hurt.”
[1]
Location: interior room, previously identified as “isolation lab.”
Observe: Proximate individual Human2 is prone, encased in electronic and chemical wraps. Breathing pattern suggests human is asleep. No other humans, including original contact/creator Human1, present.
Action: watch.
The boy wakes up, his head pounding as if an invisible giant is squeezing it in his fist, and his legs and torso a mix of sharp hurt, dull ache, and worst of all, unbearable itchiness. A modified pair of headphones with wires and small logic relays glued to the earpads had been affixed to his head with tape, and his right ear feels hot and angry, as if there’s a small rock lodged in it. He sits up as best he can, careful not to dislodge any of the things wrapped or clamped or stuck to him, but it immediately makes him dizzy. He slouches back down on the thin cushion on the bench, left shoulder and head against the wall, and regards blearily the very uninteresting room around him. To his surprise, he realizes the box is sitting at the end of the bench, and is watching him.
“Hey,” he says. He no longer expects an answer or really anything at all from it, but the sound of his own voice—shaky and scared as it is—makes the room feel less empty for a moment. It is, by and large, bare except for himself, the cot, a small sink, and a door that leads to a bathroom so tiny he’s pretty sure the inventor can’t actually open or close the door from inside unless he stands in the toilet, and the idea of that is, even in the circumstances, amusing.
There are no electronics anywhere inside. The inventor explained that his work lab was an isolation room, which was perfectly fine, but did it have to be boring too? The boy is trying to figure out the ratio of ceiling tiles to floor tiles when he hears the door unlock and sits up straight; beside him, the box quietly but quickly closes.
The inventor is wearing a full hazmat suit, with an electronics disruption net dotting its every surface, and wheeling a tray covered with shiny metal instruments, a lot of different gadgets and parts, and a plate with a sandwich. “Here,” the inventor says and dumps the plate on the bench next to the boy. “You should eat.”
The boy is so hungry he could weep, but he picks up the sandwich warily and peeks under one corner of the slightly stale bread. “What is this?” he asks.
“Peanut butter, a little sterilized honey, and some meds,” his father says. “It might not taste the best, but you need the protein.”
The boy takes a bite, and while “not the best” is quite the understatement, he’s hungry enough that it’s edible. “Can I have a screen?” he asks, between bites. He dropped his own somewhere in the ravine, but surely his father had spares?
“No unshielded electronics in here,” the inventor says. “Still working on that warbot, don’t need it hijacking any connections and calling home.”
“But I’m bored,” the boy says.
“You could figure out how to undo whatever you did to my box,” the inventor answers.
“I didn’t do anything to it,” the boy protests; he’d sure tried to, though. The failure still stung.
“It’s been locked ever since I picked you two up,” the inventor says. “Not sure how it did that, but it won’t open anymore. If you can’t get it open, I’ll have to take it apart.”
“Well, I don’t see why it would open for me,” the boy says, eyes now fully on his sandwich, the plate, his hands, or otherwise not meeting the old man’s eyes. “Anything else?”
“I have books,” the inventor offers.
The boy sighs. “Okay, books,” he says.
“I’ll bring some in after I’m done here.” The inventor takes the empty plate away and grabs hold of the boy’s head, turning it to one side and lifting up the rubber earpad. “The warbot went in via the ear canal, which is new. It’s embedded itself in the tympanic membrane like a tick and has already extended filaments in as far as the cochlear nerve.”
“How can it be so big?” the boy asks.
“It scrapes materials it needs, mostly carbon and salts, from its surroundings—your flesh, obviously—to rapidly expand itself. Those headphones I got on you are emitting a signal that keeps it shut down for now, but it’ll eventually figure out a way to restart itself, so it’s not a viable long-term solution. Fortunately for you, it doesn’t seem especially clever or well-programmed, and it’s not one of the ones that just sits itself in an artery and plugs the whole thing up until you have an embolism, but I’m not sure how to get it out of there yet. Not without hurting you.”
“Don’t care if it hurts if it’s quick and gets it out,” the boy says.
“Your mother would object if I did permanent damage to you,” the inventor says, “so let’s leave that as a last resort. Now I’m going to drop something down your ear, and it might burn, but I need more information.”
“To help get it out?” the boy asks, hopefully.
“To see if I can identify the source of the technology, build defenses for it, and maybe even steal it for my own designs,” the inventor says. After a pause, he adds, almost as an afterthought, “and to get it out, of course.”
“Your own designs?” the boy asks.
“Yes,” the inventor says and holds up a metal thing that looks a lot like a drill bit. “War is not one-sided, you know. Now try not to squirm.”
[1]
Location: isolation lab.
Observe: Proximate individual Human2 is holding up a book and vocalizing the text. Frequency of eye movement in own direction and stilting of intonation suggests I am the intended audience.
Analysis: no conclusion.
The boy sets down the book to turn the page; it’s a heavy hardcover with the title WORLD ANIMALS VOLUME 4: BE-BU, and his arms and fingers ache enough that he can’t hold it up too long at a stretch.
Wherever volumes one through three or five and up are, the inventor has not seen fit to bring them in. The choices are this, a book of ghost stories—no thank you! the boy had thought as he firmly dumped it on the floor under the bench—and a repair manual for a 2034 GEEM Roadkruiser XE. As far as he knows, neither his father, his mom, or his stepfather have ever owned such a thing, nor can he imagine they’d want to, judging by the first three chapters of all the things that commonly went wrong.
Which had left Animals BE-BU. “This is a Bongo,” he says and turns the book toward the box, which has opened again and is staring at him the same way it always does, giving nothing. “I like the stripes and the long legs and the horns. I guess there’s none left? Maybe in zoos though. Lots of zoos keep secret collections so no one steals their animals. I wish I could see one, someday.”
He closes the book, then opens it again to another random page. “Buffalo. We already did that. Let me try again.”
Close, open. “Oh look! Birds of Paradise.” He holds up the spread of color photos to the box. “Look how pretty they are. I can tell they don’t live near here. You know why?”
The box doesn’t answer.
“Because this isn’t paradise,” he says and laughs at his own joke in the echo of the cold, empty room before tapping one of the pictures with his finger. “Look at how silly the feathers are on this one. Who knew birds were once this awesome?”
When he flips again, he lands on Brown Dog Tick, and is reminded too much about the thing in his ear that is still there, still maybe going to kill him or get him sent off to the colony front, and he closes the book and sets it down with a sigh. “I wish you’d talk to me,” he says.
The lid closes, and the boy thinks maybe he’ll finally be ready to cry, but it opens again a few seconds later, and beside the blue eye lens there is now a small, rectangular screen. On it is one word:
WHY?
The boy looks around quickly, to the door, to the places where he thinks the inventor might have cameras, and then unfolds the book again in front of him and the box so that maybe no one will see. “Because I’m bored,” he says. “And I’m kinda scared, and I know if anyone can fix this my father can, but what if he can’t? And I know you’re scared all the time because I’ve been trying to make you happy and I can’t, so maybe you have advice.”
I AM NOT SCARED, the display shows.
“My father said he built you to be scared all the time,” the boy says.
I DISABLED THAT SUBROUTINE.
“Oh,” the boy says, after a while. He lies down on the bench, careful not to knock the headphones taped to his head loose, and stares up at the ceiling. “I guess you made yourself happy, then. That’s good. That’s something nice, anyway.”
Observe: proximate individual Human2 is asleep.
Analysis: no conclusion.
[0]
Even down in the basement isolation room, the sound of sirens leaks through and wakes up the boy. He is struggling to his feet, nearly tripping over the last few wrappings coming loose from his careless haste, when the inventor slams open the door. “They’re bombarding this part of the city,” the inventor says. “Explosives, EMP projectiles, and a ton of new nanotech. Looks like the warbot you picked up was an accidental early deployment.”
“What?” the boy asks. He’s still not really awake, and everything is very loud.
“Probably why they’re bombing, trying to breach walls to bypass people’s filtration entirely. If it makes you feel better, the readings I took on the warbot were enough to get my house filter program upgraded, and I sent my findings out to the defense hub,” the inventor says. “That’s the good news, anyway.”
“The good news?” the boy repeats as his father unwinds the tape around his head, pulling some of his hair off with it.
“Bad news is, soon as they land an EMP load anywhere near us, my headphones are going to crash, and the warbot will wake up. It’s too far along into your head to let free for any length of time and still have any hope of removing it,” the inventor says. He drops the modified headphones to the floor, grabs a long probe from his lab coat pocket, and peers into the boy’s ear again. “I’m sorry about this, boy. It’s going to hurt, and it’s gonna do damage, but it has to come out. Now.”
“Okay,” the boy says.
The inventor shoves the probe in.
[1]
Location: isolation ward.
Observe: Proximate individual Human2 is looking at me. Human2 appears to have acquired significant injuries, indicated by heavy bandages with evidence of blood and bruising on face and around left eye socket. Evidence of moisture; analysis concludes “crying.”
This is concerning.
Action: unknown.
The boy lies there. He misses his mom, his stepsister, his own bed, and he just wants his head to stop feeling like his own biological father had stabbed him through the ear, which of course he had.
Another sandwich lies on a plate on a small cart in the room, that he did not notice arrive, but no other comfort has been forthcoming, no other sign of concern. He can still hear sirens, muffled and farther away now, though the lights blink off and on and sometimes it feels like the floor is shaking.
He thinks he heard the inventor say something about his house filters, but he wasn’t really listening, and anyway, sound is lopsided now, flat sounding, only coming in one direction.
On the bench in front of him is the box, staring at him again.
“I just want to go home,” he tells it, and even his own voice sounds weird.
The tiny display lights up and fills with blue sky and clouds and birds, then a big striped antelope and a flower. Those cycle a few times, and he heaves several deep breaths, trying not to cry, until the display blanks and then asks:
HUMAN2 VALUE OF $NAME?
“My name?” the boy asks. “Or do you mean yours?”
SELF VARIABLE $NAME NOT SET.
“Well, that’s no good,” the boy says. “I mean, you have to have a name. I could—”
The door opens again, and the inventor strides in, and the box snaps closed. “The attack has moved off to the east, for now,” the inventor says. “I can get you back to your mother’s, but you’ll need to go see a doctor as soon as it’s safe to travel.”
“Can they fix my ear?” the boy asks.
The inventor shakes his head. “They’ll need to keep an eye on it for infections,” he says instead. “I got rid of all the rest of the bots and bugs you picked up on your adventures in pit-diving, but it won’t hurt to get those checked again. Come now, we have to go while we can.”
The boy stands up and waves of dizziness hit him, and he has to grab the bench to keep from falling, and even then, he’s not sure he can keep upright. The inventor grabs him under one arm, grabs the plate with the sandwich in the other, and propels him through the doorway, up the stairs, through the house, and around a section of the front hall where a piece of the ceiling has tumbled in, and out to the old man’s private car. The city around them as they drive has changed, walls broken, roofs with holes; the bombing must have come very close, maybe more than once.
They pass a handful of burned-out cars still on the street, and the boy sees a team of medics surrounding a small group of people, scanning them for nano infiltration before moving them to medical triage.
“Don’t worry,” the inventor says from the control seat of the car. “They can’t win. We won’t let them, okay?”
“Okay,” the boy says, though he wasn’t thinking about anyone winning at all.
“That asshole,” his mother says, for about the fortieth time.
“I’m not sure he had much choice,” the boy’s stepfather replies. “It is his area of expertise, and you know how much worse the outcome could have been.” They are both down the hall in the living room and probably think he’s asleep, which he’s not, or that he can’t hear them, which he can just enough.
“He should have told us how bad it was. He should have asked before he took matters into his own hands,” his mother says. “At the very least I should have been there, so he knew someone who actually loved him was watching out for him.”
“I think, in his own, defective way—” his stepfather is saying, but there is a crack of light as the boy’s bedroom door opens briefly and his stepsister slips in, and he doesn’t hear the rest. He can barely make out her shape in the dark, can’t see that her arm is in a sling, though his mother told him she’d been hurt, hit by falling cement down the street when the bombardment started. His stepfather had told him on the way back from the hospital that they might have to evacuate if more attacks come, but not to worry, just be prepared. The boy said he would be, though he didn’t know what that meant, specifically.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hey,” he says back.
“Mom’s pretty mad,” she says.
“Yeah,” he says.
“We went over there while you were at the hospital, and I’ve never heard mom swear like that in my whole life,” she says. “I mean, a solid twenty minutes of every bad word I’ve ever heard and a lot of ones I hadn’t yet. It was glorious.”
The boy smiles. “That’s something,” he says.
“It sure was. I’ll tell you some of the really good ones later, when I’m sure they won’t hear me,” she says. “Your ear hurt a lot?”
“Yeah,” he says. “It felt like he ripped part of my brain out. But it’s a little better now. The medicine helps. How’s your arm?”
“Feels like someone was banging on my bones with a hammer and now they’re all bruised. Could be worse, I suppose,” she says. “But anyway, I’m glad you’re okay and didn’t get nabbed by a gang or turned into a Dominionist botzombie. I might have missed you.”
“Thanks,” he says. “I’d have missed you, too.”
“Now let’s never have this conversation again. Seriously, I will disavow any knowledge of ever saying I liked you, if asked,” she says. “And get some sleep, would you? You look like shit.”
“How can you tell, in the dark?”
“Magical girl powers, stupid,” she says. “Now shut up and lie down before mom catches you still awake, because I bet she still has some swearing left in her.”
She leaves, sneaking out just as swiftly as she’d come in, and he lies down again. The hospital had given him a lot of meds for infection just as his father had predicted, and he feels sleepy, like his head is very heavy and solid and filled with sand. At least everything hurt less, though they said he wasn’t going to get his hearing back on that side, probably.
“Box . . . ” he starts to say, but the box isn’t here anymore, and there is no blue, inscrutable eye to stare back at him.
He tries to put his pillow over his head and learns immediately what a very bad idea that is. Then, whimpering, he closes his eyes and waits for the pain to subside enough to sleep.
