Stuck.
Ro tries again. “We can’t just sit here waiting to die. Not after what we did to the Icon in the Hole. We gave those people a chance—we gave ourselves a chance. If we don’t take it, who will? What then?”
We all know the answer to that. The Lords will destroy our people while the Sympas laugh.
Ro turns to Fortis. “There has to be a way out of here. A Merk outpost? Geo station? Anything?” Ro is relentless. Inspiring, almost.
And absolutely crazy.
“There’s your fightin’ spirit,” Fortis says, clapping him on the back. “An’ here’s my fightin’ spirits.” He pulls out his flask, slumping down to the desert floor next to me. And that’s his real answer, I think.
“Ro’s right. We can’t give up.” I look at him. “Not now. Not after everything.”
Not after the Embassy. The Hole. The Icon. The Desert. Nellis.
Fortis pats my leg, and I wince. “Give up, Grassgirl? We’re only just gettin’ started. Don’t send me off to an early grave yet, love. I’m too young and too pretty to die.”
The fire throws shadows on his face, hiding his eyes, grossly exaggerating his stubbled, bone-tight features. At this particular moment, he looks like some kind of evil puppet from a child’s nightmare.
Barely human.
“You know, you’re not all that pretty,” I say, my throat still full of dust.
He laughs, more like a bark, pocketing his flask. “That’s what my mum said.” As he draws his arm around me I can only shiver.
Then Tima groans awake, clutching her arm, and I forget about everything but staying and being alive.
GENERAL EMBASSY DISPATCH:
EASTASIA SUBSTATION
MARKED URGENT
MARKED EYES ONLY
Internal Investigative Subcommittee IIS211B
RE: The Incident at SEA Colonies
As promised.
Below are excerpted records of communication between Fortissimo (“FORTIS”) and his AI (HAL2040—the early iteration of the somewhat rudimentary Virtual Human we know as “Doc”). These are initial attempts by Fortissimo and his AI to contact the foreign object first thought to be an asteroid, and thus labeled Perses, proving early awareness of potential threat.
Note: Fortissimo’s use of “hello world” (in this case, done in multiple languages) is an ancient programming trope. Displaying the phrase “hello world” indicates success in getting a new machine to connect to its network, to communicate, or show some intelligence. By human standards. (Note: Physical Humans, that is. Virtual Human standards are by nature much higher.)
Yours,
Jasmine3k
Virt. Hybrid Human 39261.SEA
Laboratory Assistant to Dr. E. Yang
HAL2040 ==> FORTIS
Transcript - ComLog 04.13.2042
HAL::PERSES
//lognote: {PERSES communication attempt #413};
sendfile: ascii.tab;
sendfile: dict.glob.lang;
//lognote: as before, sending files with dictionaries/text protocols;
sendline: hello world;
return: . . . . . no response;
sendline: 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 0100000 01110111 01101111 01110010 01101100 01100100;
return: . . . . . no response;
sendline: 48:65:6c:6c:6f:20:57:6f:72:6c:64;
return: . . . . . . no response;
sendline: an ki lu sal an ki lu sal an ki lu sal an ki lu sal;
return: . . . . . . no response;
//lognote: communication attempts in English, binary, hex, ancient languages find PERSES unresponsive.;
Sleep only brings nightmares. When I wake up, I return to consciousness as suddenly and as restlessly as I left it.
Sitting up, I want to run, gasping for air in the cold. My heart pounds and every beat is a question.
Where am I? Are we safe? Are we still free?
I fall back on my side, staring into the growing shadows of the wild desert brush in front of me.
No Sympas. No ships. No Lords. Nothing I haven’t seen for the last week now.
I study the landscape like a clock as I try to catch my breath. The long shadows mean it’s nearly dark, which means it’s time to get up and move. The terrain has grown increasingly strange, alien almost, as we’ve crawled from rock to rock in the darkness. Anything to avoid the Sympas combing the desert, looking for us.
We sleep in the day and travel in the night now, ever since our Chopper went down.
At least we have established contact with Doc through the comlink cuffs—thanks to the com relay Fortis was able to salvage from the crashed Chopper. Doc keeps us away from patrols and, we hope, moving toward somewhere safe. He’s been tracking Sympa deployments since our Chopper went down; they’re looking for us—everywhere—but they haven’t found us yet.
They. The Embassies. The Lords. It almost doesn’t matter which, not anymore. They’ll find us, whoever they are in the end.
It’s only a matter of time.
The longer we wander in the desert—exposed to the elements and targeted by the Embassy—the stronger the grip despair has on me.
Despair from the bleak truth that, back in the Hole that once was Los Angeles, even without the Icon, the Embassy reportedly still has all the power, and the weapons.
The bleak truth that, according to what we learned during our too-brief stay in Nellis, Catallus has come down with a fury on the people of the city, and the Projects run uninterrupted.
I look up to where Lucas sits across from me, huddling in only his shirtsleeves on the red rocky ledge. It takes me a moment to realize that Lucas has laid his torn Embassy jacket over me, along with his blanket.
He smiles, almost shyly, and I soften, seeing the cold purple-blue of his mouth.
I don’t know why I can’t just say what I think—that I’m grateful, that he’s thoughtful. That when I see his mouth I want to kiss it, kiss him, but since we are never alone, I don’t dare.
My empty stomach growls as I turn to see who else is there, just in case I’m wrong. I’m not; Fortis snores on one side of me, under a pile of brush that can’t camouflage his woolen, red-toed socks pointing to the sky like two knit rabbit ears. Tima is passed out on the other side of him, covered in dust and almost completely hidden in a neat zigzag of folded arms and legs, like some kind of compact military gear. Brutus is nestled in the crook of her knees, himself snoring so loudly you would think he was Fortis’s son more than Tima’s dog. Ro, as usual, is nowhere to be seen, but he doesn’t like to sleep near any of us, not since we left the Mission.
He won’t get that close to Lucas.