Zero echo shadow prime, p.19
Zero Echo Shadow Prime, page 19
Then, just as quickly as it started, Liam broke away.
Charlie caught him by the wrist. He turned around, expecting her to say something, but what could she say? Take me with you? We can find her together? It sounded so stupid and desperate in her head, but he was waiting patiently, and she had to say something. Finally, she just asked, “Why?”
Liam cocked his head. “Why?”
Charlie’s heart was still racing. She wasn’t conscious of her own question until it passed through her lips. “Why are you looking for her?”
“What do you mean? You asked me to.”
“I’m not stupid, Liam.”
The kiss had flustered him, but now he was doubly so. He opened his mouth but had trouble formulating anything coherent. “I…we…” His hands slipped from hers, and he turned away without saying another word.
Liam got halfway across the store when Charlie shouted, “You forgot something!” She dangled the loose handcuffs in the air. His eyes widened, and Charlie instantly regretted informing him of the oversight. She tightened her grip on the cuffs as he marched toward her.
“Gimme,” Liam said, curling his fingers at her. He was done playing games.
“We can handle Rivir ourselves,” Charlie pleaded. “Just the two of us. Or three of us.”
“You want me to find your sister, but you’ll have me abandon mine?”
“She’s using you.”
“Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?” he barked. “I am not doing anything I don’t want to do.”
“Does that include holding me against my will?”
He exhaled sharply, but his drifting glance suggested he was angrier at himself than at her. “Fine! If you wanna leave, leave!”
“Great! You first!”
Neither one left. They held each other’s angry stares until Yuri burst through the door with a stupid, elated grin and exclaimed, “We’re leaving!”
PRIME
Like a chrysalis, Charlie healed herself under the surface of the San Francisco Bay. Her body came equipped with a colony of nanomites, and they chewed, molecule by molecule, through the mercury amalgam bullets and their immobilizing tentacles. It was a slow process.
Hours turned into days, and Charlie grew desperate for news on her sister’s whereabouts. Alan remained stubbornly cautious—the airspace above the bay was swarming with Pollys. If Charlie ascended high enough to access the Internet, it would also place her within the proximity of the Pollys’ ID sensors. So she heeded Alan’s counsel, much to her chagrin, and remained submerged and ignorant.
{Charlie_Nobunaga:mindspace> Alan: You should be managing your expectations. Even if we find ZERO, she may not be happy to see you.
Charlie: Why the hell would you say that?
Alan: Look at it from her point of view. You’re a super-powered robot. She’s a frail, dying human. She fell on the crappy end of the divide.
Charlie: I think you're the one she won't be happy to see, and you can't handle two angry Charlies.
Alan: Don’t you know me by now? I’d gladly suffer the wrath of a billion Charlies if it meant saving just one.}
On the morning of the third day, Alan finally gave Charlie a clean bill of health. She torpedoed toward the surface of the bay, momentarily forgetting about the Pollys. “Wait!” Alan cried, but Charlie would not be deterred. Her head popped out of the water and searched the area. To Alan’s relief, the Pollys were gone. The sky was mysteriously empty.
{Alan: That’s curious.
Charlie: Great, no Pollys. Now let’s go find her.
Alan: First things first. We need to get you some clothes.}
Charlie examined herself and discovered that she was completely naked. At some point, her shredded hospital scrubs must have floated away.
{Charlie: Indeed.}
She swam toward the nearest shore, Crissy Field. Once an airfield, the area was now a retail center and park. Crissy Field also attracted a lot of joggers because of its views of the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. Charlie didn’t see anyone around, so she walked up the small beach, water dripping off her nude body.
{Alan: Um, what are you doing?
Charlie: I’m procuring clothes…like the Terminator.}
Charlie spotted a lone jogger in the distance and set a course to intercept him.
{Alan: There are subtler ways of doing it. You can hack his bots. Make him believe he’s covered in fire ants. Or just fire.
Charlie: We lost nearly three days, Alan. No time to play around.}
The jogger slowed down when he saw Charlie. His expression was a mixture of confusion and excitement. “Um, hi,” he said.
Charlie kept advancing on him.
“Do you need help or something?” the jogger asked.
“Sorry.” Charlie swiveled behind him and grabbed him in a headlock. The jogger resisted, but she overpowered him. He slowly lost consciousness and fell limp in her arms.
{Alan: I saw someone else in your periphery.}
Charlie peered down the track and spotted another jogger approaching from a distance. She breathed a heavy sigh—this plan was quickly becoming way too complicated. Should she subdue the man and increase the body count, or follow Alan’s advice and hack his smart cells? She closed her eyes and concentrated.
{Adam_Hines: mindspace>
Adam was enjoying his jog, taking in the fresh air of the bay, when he spotted something unusual for a chilly October morning: a woman in a bikini. She was embracing a man—probably her boyfriend—beside the path. As Adam jogged closer, more details emerged. She actually wasn’t wearing a bikini. She was completely nude! And her boyfriend appeared to be unconscious.
Adam slowed his pace. Whatever these people were up to, it was certainly more interesting than anything else he would see on the path. Maybe she would ask for his help. At the very least, he wanted to get a good, long look at her.
Suddenly, the duo vanished into thin air. Huh? }
Charlie watched as the jogger stopped cold. Was she too late? Did he see her? He looked around some nearby bushes and scratched his head. His brow contorted in deep confusion. But finally, he decided to continue his jog.
Charlie breathed a heavy sigh of relief as the man receded down the path. However, the first jogger—the one in her arms—was starting to wake up. “Shit!” she blurted.
{Charlie_Nobunaga:mindspace> Charlie: Being a superhero is not easy.
Alan: I’d say you more resemble a sexual predator right now than a superhero.
Charlie: Maybe if I punch him…}
Charlie didn’t want to hurt the man too much, so she pulled her fist back only a few inches and bopped him on the nose. The result was a blood explosion.
“Oww, fuck!” the jogger cried. He cradled his nose to stem the crimson flow.
“I’m so sorry,” Charlie said. “I was just trying to make you unconscious.”
“Why!?”
“I need your clothes.”
The jogger’s eyes widened with recognition. “Wait, a minute…wait, a minute…you’re that zombie surrogate. The one on the news.”
{Charlie: Zombie surrogate?
Alan: It’s a trending term now. Not as bad as abomination, which is what the Pope is calling you.}
Charlie made a split-second decision. She would play along. “Yeah, I’m her.”
“You’re not gonna kill me, are you?”
“I will if you don’t give me your shirt,” Charlie bellowed in what she thought was an evil robot voice. “And try not to get blood on it.”
The jogger fumbled with his bloody fingers, but it was a lost cause. By the time he handed over the shirt, it was covered in red splotches.
Charlie sighed. “Now give me your shorts.”
“You’re going to leave me naked?” the jogger asked.
“Do you have underwear on?”
“Yes.”
“Then stop complaining. Look what I have to deal with.”
The jogger tilted his head down and perused her nude body. His eyes lingered a little too long. Charlie waved her hand in front of his face. “Hey, I didn’t tell you to stare. Your shorts!”
The jogger pulled off his shorts and handed them to her. They were bloody, sweaty, and baggy, and if they hadn’t included a drawstring, they would have been completely useless. It was only a temporary solution, though. Charlie would have to steal some fresh clothes at her first opportunity.
“Now jog the way you came and don’t look back,” she said. “If you do, I’ll run you down and rip your arms off.”
“But…”
“No buts. Go!”
The jogger stumbled to his feet, gave Charlie one last dirty look, and took off in the direction of the Golden Gate Bridge.
{Alan: You just let him go?
Charlie: What was I going to do? Kill him?
Alan: Well, we should leave this area.}
Charlie noticed a Polly out of the corner of her eye, just beyond the bridge’s south tower. She froze, but the Polly did not fly her way. Instead, it ascended into the clouds. Charlie scanned the San Francisco skyline and noticed other glints of light. A dozen or so Pollys were all traveling skyward.
{Charlie: What is going on? Why are they all leaving?
Alan: There’s something I should tell you…something I learned as we surfaced. You might want to sit down for this.
Charlie: What is it?
Alan: Your father…he’s dead.}
ZERO
The Sapiens split into two groups. Liam and Nicola left the store immediately. Yuri and the flight team stayed another hour to collect their belongings and wipe the floors clean. Charlie was stuck with the latter group.
“Where are we going?” Charlie asked as she was thrown into the back of the van.
“We are finally going to meet him,” one of the girls said with anxious jubilation. “Bob Sapio.”
The van traveled north, toward the city. They were no longer shy about taking major highways—the chaos outside virtually guaranteed their anonymity. Waves of military trucks and hovercopters zipped past them on the 101, and everywhere Charlie turned, Pollys were floating en masse into the clouds. The spectacle, of course, energized the flight team. It had the opposite effect on Charlie. It was hard not to get the feeling that the world was about to end.
The trip took several hours, due to apocalypse traffic. Charlie nodded off a few times—the upholstery in the car was infinitely more comfortable than her cardboard bed. Yuri roused her from deep sleep once they had reached their destination. He stood outside the car with a smarmy grin and tossed some clothes onto her lap. “Put these on.”
“Um, can I have some privacy?” Charlie asked, slipping out of her daze.
Yuri huffed and turned his back. Charlie removed her grimy track clothes and put on a fresh T-shirt and jeans. When she finished, Yuri scooped her out of the car and placed her into a wheelchair. He fished a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket and cuffed her to the armrest. “These are going back on.”
Charlie had to tilt her head to view the house, which was simultaneously rustic and luxurious. It stood precariously on the face of a steep hill, overlooking the bay and, she guessed, the harbor town of Sausalito. Dozens of weather-beaten homes receded into fog, which soaked the region and blocked out much of the sun. Without smart cells, a mobile, or even a watch, Charlie had no way of telling the time here. It could have been high noon for all she knew.
Charlie passed two large vans as Yuri wheeled her up the long driveway. The winding road below was also packed with cars. Was the entire Sapien Movement here?
“This is an honor, and you should treat it as such,” Yuri whispered as they reached the front door. “I didn’t get a talk with Bob until years after I joined the Movement.”
The Sapiens had congregated in the living room. They sat in foldout chairs, three rows deep, curved in a semicircle formation. There were a few older members—Charlie recognized Darius Little from the Vantage news broadcast—but most of the Sapiens were young twentysomethings. Bob Sapio stood at the head of the room, speaking with aplomb, and his adoring crowd hung on every word.
“We cannot celebrate too quickly,” he proclaimed. “What we accomplished these past few days will go down in history if…if we finish what we’ve started. You can be sure that the enemies of humanity—the oligarchy and their depraved servants, Jude Adler and all those who have infiltrated our once proud democracy—will retaliate. They will do everything in their power to stop us, through defamation and through force. If they win, every man, woman, and child on the planet will eventually be discarded like a piece of roadside trash. Human history will essentially end, because there will be no humans left to record it. The stakes could not be higher, but the founding fathers faced similar odds…”
Charlie stopped paying attention to what Bob was saying. She became more interested in the man himself. He was old…very old. Charlie couldn’t even guess his age because she had never seen a man so ancient-looking outside of historical photos. It made sense that Bob would eschew cellular damage therapy—even if he hadn’t murdered those longevity biologists, as the FBI claimed, he was still an ardent critic of their work. Yet despite his advanced age, Bob possessed a natural energy that kept him sharp and animated.
“And here she is—the real Charlie Nobunaga!” Bob suddenly announced from his pulpit. The entire congregation turned in her direction.
What little color was left in Charlie’s face drained right out. Her anxious fingers gripped the armrests as Yuri wheeled her to the front of the room.
Bob opened his arms and smiled warmly, his face full of creases. “Charlie was instrumental in Operation Kamikaze, and she deserves our thanks.”
The room erupted in applause. Charlie gave a tepid grin and waved her free hand. She didn’t know quite how to respond.
She noticed something peculiar from her new vantage point; a hibernation chamber sat in the center of the room. The congregation wrapped around it like an altar. Nicola slouched over it, seemingly oblivious to Charlie, Bob, or anyone else. She was busy working the touch controls on the chamber’s glass door.
Bob continued, “As you all well know, Charlie was almost replaced by a zombie surrogate. Almost, because a few brave Sapiens were able to liberate her from virtual purgatory…”
The applause surged. Yuri took a bow. Nicola lifted her head and waved. At that moment, Charlie knew who was lying in the hibernation chamber, because his presence was conspicuously missing from the crowd. She leaned out of her wheelchair, peered into the chamber, and confirmed her suspicion: Liam.
11
ANDREW NOBUNAGA OF LOTUS DIES AT 53 — Vantage, October 6, 2045
Visionary founder of Lotus, codeveloper of Pacific Space Port, decorated Air Force general, and devoted family man, Andrew Nobunaga finally cracked under the strain of personal tragedy.
…
His wife, Lauren Nobunaga, died of pancreatic cancer in 2037. His twin daughters eventually succumbed to the same disease—Bridget in 2043 and Charlotte only a few weeks ago. Rivir CEO Jude Adler attempted to preserve the mind of Charlotte Nobunaga—known to family and friends as Charlie—in the body of a robot. That robot has now come to epitomize the inherent dangers of human-augmentation technology, as well as the hubris of Jude Adler and her company. But to Andrew Nobunaga, the robot represented hope, the hope of a father.
…
Police found his body lying on the floor of his estate’s observatory, and a preliminary health scan revealed that his system was full of the illicit nanobot, Rapture. Often used as a suicide agent, Rapture both stops the user's heart and neutralizes the native smart cells—an unfortunate twist for the police, who were hoping to glean forensic evidence from Mr. Nobunaga’s memory archives. Fortunately, his Shadow, a likeness of seventeenth-century astronomer Johannes Kepler, was mirrored on the estate's local network, and he was able to relay the tragic events. In a moment of weakness, Mr. Nobunaga allegedly destroyed his own beloved Lotus ships, remote-guiding them into several Polly Support Satellites, just before taking his own life.
…
If there is a bittersweet ending to this story, it is this: Andrew Nobunaga’s body has been shipped to Control-Z, the hibernation depot. His chamber will rest side by side with those of his two daughters in the hopes that one day, in the not so distant future, the Nobunaga family will be revived and reunited.
PRIME
Johannes Kepler’s version of events was generally accepted by the media, but Charlie knew it was utter garbage. Her father would never kill himself, and he would never destroy his own fleet.
“I need to see him,” Charlie announced. She grabbed a fresh change of clothes from the nearest thrift store, hacked a car, and headed toward the Control-Z campus, just north of Santa Cruz.
{Charlie_Nobunaga:mindspace> Alan: This is a terrible idea. I know you’re upset—
Charlie: Of course, I’m upset. You know who was also upset? My father. When I got sick, he did everything he could to save me. When I was stuck in the sixth sub-basement of Rivir Tower, he did everything he could to find me.
Alan: I was the one who found you.
Charlie: Under his behest.
Alan: You don’t think I would have searched on my own?
Charlie: The point is, I owe him this.
Alan: Okay, but I’m a little uncertain as to what this is.
Charlie: We need to find out who killed him.
Alan: Two thoughts to that. First, the news said his smart cells were wiped—
