I do advocate human supremacy. The E10 will never work on a dog, let alone be made by one.
Arnon D’Bvaym
64BIT TORE THROUGH the documents in his mind again, unconsciously twitching his hands as if he were sorting through real papers.
He didn’t remember his early youth very well—his memories before the age of seven were vague. This was never something 64Bit had been concerned about until now, when he discovered that the master had performed brain surgery on him twice while he was still very young. The first time was his initiation—when his technomancer chip was first placed in the center of his brain, and when his frame was first introduced to his body. There were notes with this that 64Bit didn’t understand, about “remarkable potential, but nothing changing.”
Nothing changing—what does that mean? 64Bit yelled inwardly.
The master had later operated on him a second time, a little under a year later, to tweak his technomancer chip. Even trying to modify a technomancer chip a month after it was first implanted was incredibly dangerous, so quickly did a technomancer incorporate the chip into his system. And for what? The notes stated that, in addition to complications such as 64Bit losing his sight—“My eyes were not lost to tumors!” he gasped— his technomancer chip was cut in half. Specifically, the part of the chip that enabled him to communicate with technology mentally.
Reviewing that part left 64Bit lying on the floor, staring blankly at the ceiling, while a very concerned Westley went to find some food, cool water, and a towel.
“The sheer reckless, calloused, irresponsible cruelty,” 64Bit whispered. The purpose of medicine was to help, not harm. His master—the man 64Bit believed to be so wise, so mature, so kindly, so patient with 64Bit’s weaknesses, describing him as a late bloomer—so much that was wrong with 64Bit was directly, avoidably, inexplicably his fault.
And for what reason? The future is now uncertain: his last note.
The future is now uncertain. A vision? Did the old man perform a risky operation on a child in response to a vision of the future? Or merely in response to something that he predicted would happen? Why would he want the future to be uncertain?
“Is this what he was going to tell me?” 64Bit whispered, remembering sitting at breakfast with his master, learning there was something the master had waited a long time to tell him.
64Bit rolled to his side, uncomfortable from lying on several hard things, but he ignored it. He almost wished Westley would ask him more questions: Westley had asked what was wrong and 64Bit had hastily explained that he was broken, whatever that meant. “My chip—my master broke my chip. That’s why I can’t interact with anything without a manual connection—the medkit, the house doors, the staff. The staff! Damned from the moment I laid eyes on it and believed I was something more—I never had the power to save anyone.” Talking had helped him process that one bit of information enough to begin sorting through the rest of the data dump.
At the same time, the last thing 64Bit wanted to do was talk to someone about the intensely private anger and betrayal he felt. Just the mere thought made him cower like he suddenly found himself naked in front of a crowd.
Something underneath him began to hurt. 64Bit reached his good hand under his side, rooted around, and pulled out the Therexe Cube. He stared at it, habitual feelings of frustration warring with a strange sense of release. “It’s not my fault—it’s not laziness or a lack of effort that I can’t do anything with you,” he said to the cube. “It’s not a lack of study or understanding. It’s simply a lack—an inability. I can’t.”
The cube didn’t respond in any way.
64Bit pocketed the cube, placing it in the opposite pocket from the statuette, and rolled onto his back again, staring upward through a large hole at the cloudless, starry evening sky. Great swaths of light painted the purple-blue space above him in glittering lines as distant suns and galaxies made their presence known.
“Why?” 64Bit asked.
The stars didn’t respond in any way.
“Sometimes we have to live the will of God before we can understand it,” a voice said.
64Bit inclined his head just enough to see Westley above him, standing in the doorway to the master’s room, holding a mug, a cloth, and a dried apple—the master had treated those as desserts, not a snack or a meal.
“The Creator didn’t do this—he better not have,” 64Bit said, and stared at the sky again, his mind already making connections. Had the Creator commanded it? The future is now uncertain—his master did not ever speculate on the future except to discuss visions and prophecy. Was that note connected to his previous note, Nothing changing? There seemed to have been a slight progression from nothing changing to future uncertainty. Were visions and prophecy just cruel casts of divine dice, to see how mortals would scramble to respond?
64Bit’s own vision had come at a terrible moment, and he had not understood it well enough to protect Fort. A trend?
“Not enough data,” 64Bit whispered. Still, his faith was shaken.
Westley didn’t respond. He sat next to 64Bit, tore off a bit of the apple, and offered it to him. 64Bit’s stomach rumbled loudly in response—still, 64Bit only accepted a nibble. He let the dried apple piece sit on his tongue and soak in saliva, spreading sweetness to every corner of his mouth, as Westley wet the cloth with water from the mug and placed it on 64Bit’s head.
“I’m not ill,” 64Bit said. “I don’t need this.”
“Does it feel good?” Westley asked.
64Bit hadn’t considered that. He turned his attention to the towel. He didn’t like the rough texture of its fabric, but the cool water on his forehead did have a soothing effect. He decided the result was a net positive. “It was a good decision.”
Westley smiled and said no more.
“Why would he do this to me?” 64Bit said. He raised a clenched fist into the air. “I did everything meticulously, making sure every rule and order was followed exactly, completing my studies early, trying my best to be a mentor to Cortex—for what? How could he spend all those years with this hanging over us, acting like he still cared about me? Did he ever care about me? How could he? Why would he do this?”
A small meteor blazed across the sky, visible for a few moments and then blinking away.
“Why are you so quiet?” 64Bit asked.
“Huh?” Westley said.
“You don’t know how to shut up. You constantly talk. If you aren’t asking questions, you are making out-loud observations. What, now you don’t have anything to say?”
“And you don’t like to talk except to lecture,” Westley said. “These are the first personal things I’ve heard you say. Admittedly, we haven’t known each other long, but there were still patterns. It felt right to let you talk. And I don’t know enough to even know what questions to ask anyway.”
64Bit grunted in response. He lifted his hand and stared at his mechanical finger, feeling as if a light was trying to turn on in his head. “My entire life, my mind has been clouded by the assumption that something was wrong with me.”
“That sounds terrible,” Westley said.
“But I was right,” 64Bit said. “My insecurities that I couldn’t were right. I just wasn’t right on the why or how.” 64Bit flexed his mechanical finger, watching it bend and straighten. It was strange to not feel the movement of muscle and bone, but to see that, nonetheless, his unconscious commands to his limbs were being answered.
“Um,” Westley said. “Now I do have a question.” He pointed at 64Bit’s finger. “Why not just do that again?”
“I don’t need a sixth finger,” 64Bit responded.
Westley shook his head. “Look, even after everything I asked you today, I don’t know enough to know whether this question is stupid, but my question makes more sense than that. And you just might need someone who doesn’t know what the boundaries are to find the ones that don’t actually exist, anyway. So—why not do that again? You lost a finger, you made a new finger. Why not do the same with your, ah, technomancer chip?”
“Aside from the fact that performing brain surgery on myself is suicide,” 64Bit began, feeling that the light was closer to turning on, “it’s too late. I’m too old. My chip is completely integrated into my system. Messing with it could kill me, or give me amnesia, or any number of problems that might accidentally happen when messing with someone’s brain.” Then the light turned on. 64Bit sat up. “But I can still do something about it!”
“What can you—” Westley began, then was cut off when 64Bit jumped to his feet.
“I already have most of the materials that I need from hunting for the parts for the mechanical finger.” 64Bit muttered to himself. “I just need a glove, a near frequency transmitter or two, and a female port to marry with my universal jack—” He rushed to the doorway, then looked back at Westley. “Come on! You can at least hand stuff to me while I work.”
Westley jumped up to follow 64Bit to the workroom.
#
CONSUMED BY INSPIRATION, 64Bit felt a powerful sense of clarity and focus as he soldered wires, transmitters, and receivers together; sewed a tiny circuit board to the inside of a glove; and then sewed an insulating layer of fabric over his quickly constructed invention. Then he gently tugged the glove onto his hand, clicked the universal jack at the end of his mechanical finger into the port attached inside the little finger of his glove, and took a deep breath.
“Turn on,” 64Bit said, holding his hand a few inches away from the Therexe Cube.
Nothing happened.
64Bit took a deep breath, willing himself not to feel despair just yet. He moved an inch closer and spoke again. “Red light, blink.”
Nothing.
A heavy weight seemed to be pressing down on his chest. 64Bit clenched and unclenched his gloved hand, wincing at the ache he felt where his mechanical finger met his real hand. This should work—he couldn’t mentally interact with technology, not directly, but he could still make a manual connection and then control that machine with his thoughts. This device could emit and receive electromagnetic waves, and he was manually connected to it; he should be able to bypass his limitation, at least to a certain degree. It was like a prosthetic for his brain. But why wasn’t it working?
“Walls, walls,” 64Bit muttered, thinking of Westley’s earlier comments. Certain things that he thought were barriers, he hoped would prove to just be illusions. But maybe he wasn’t seeing a barrier that was here. 64Bit looked down at his glove, then thought at it as he would any computer that he had inserted his finger into: Emit signal to Therexe Cube, red light, start blinking.
A small, red light began blinking on top of the Therexe Cube.
A moment of stillness. 64Bit stared at the light, watching it blink several times just to confirm to himself that it really had obeyed him.
“It worked! By Creation, it worked!” 64Bit exclaimed, holding his gloved hand tightly to his chest. He grinned at Westley, who sat nearby staring curiously, then brought his attention back to the Therexe Cube. He redirected his next command through the glove as well. Emit to Therexe Cube the following: red light, stop blinking. Blue light, turn on.
The red light stopped blinking. The blue light turned on.
64Bit couldn’t stop his smile from growing until it almost hurt. “One last time,” he said, then imagined a pixelated eye opening and closing and pushed the image through his glove to the Therexe Cube, commanding the image to appear on its screen.
The eye appeared on the cube, blinking slowly.
64Bit looked between the cube and his gloved hand, feeling a heady rush that almost made it seem like he was standing on clouds. Finally, after years and years, he could command with his mind.
The more analytical part of 64Bit’s mind got to work, then. He gave the Therexe Cube more commands, pulling his hand back a little more each time he did. He didn’t get far before the cube stopped obeying him. He repeated his experiment in reverse, starting a few feet away from the cube and moving closer.
“Approximate distance of consistent connection: six inches,” 64Bit noted. “Spotty connection beyond that.”
“Wow!” Westley said, smiling, caught up in secondhand excitement.
“Grab my staff,” 64Bit told him.
Westley walked out of the workroom, then stuck his head through the doorframe. “Where is it?”
“Under my bed,” 64Bit replied. Westley disappeared again. 64Bit stared at the thin, brown glove that covered his left hand. For once, he felt like a real technomancer. But a small poison spread through the feeling: none of this would have been necessary if the master hadn’t broken him in the first place.
He had to find the master’s stored memories.
“Here you go,” Westley said. 64Bit turned around and took the offered staff. He felt a tingle run up his arm. Westley raised an eyebrow. “So, what does it do?”
“I don’t exactly know,” 64Bit said. The electric sensation he had received from touching the staff wasn’t as strong as he had felt after Cortex had touched the staff, but he didn’t care. At least he felt something. “It’s supposed to be able to attract and repel rozies, or cloak me and a few others from them. I don’t know exactly what that looks like. But I can do it now—I can feel it.”
“That should help a lot, I think,” Westley said.
“If we encounter a rozie like we did the other day, in the basement, I could just freeze it, then we could run,” 64Bit said. “We wouldn’t have attracted a whole crowd of rozies that way.”
“Where’s your other glove?”
Westley and 64Bit both looked to the side and saw Kayla standing in the doorway. She was breathing hard, as if she had just run a long distance.
“Where did you come from?” Westley asked.
64Bit looked at his gloved hand next to his ungloved hand. The combination did look strange. “I couldn’t find the other one.”
Kayla stepped forward. “I heard you say something about being able to use the staff? What changed? How can you be sure?”
64Bit pointed at the glove. “I devised a workaround—I can’t believe I didn’t think of this years ago. I shouldn’t have listened when the master said I was a late—” 64Bit felt his throat tighten up. He coughed and continued, “Anyway, it’s actually pretty simple. I can manually interact with things by plugging my finger into them, so I just built a little emitter/receiver to do the work I should be able to do with my head alone. I fashioned it inside this glove to keep it on my hand, make it useful at a moment’s notice.”
Kayla looked at the glove, then glanced at the staff, and shrugged. “We’ll see if it works. Not like we lose anything if it doesn’t.” She narrowed her eyes. “We need to move. Now.”
“Why?” Westley asked.
“The trunk,” Kayla said. She looked at 64Bit. “I spotted it near the main gates. Zed is here. Now is our chance to kill it.”
“The trunk that you said was . . . what, pseudo-tech?” Westley asked 64Bit. Westley’s questions had led to, earlier that day, catching up on Zed and the trunk.
64Bit nodded and felt a spike of fear at Kayla’s words. Zed had gone from wanting to kill 64Bit to wanting to kidnap him and turn him into a scientist-slave—64Bit found it hard to judge which was worse. In addition, mention of the rozie made the statuette feel very heavy in 64Bit’s pocket. He did not feel ready to confront the mad, icily intelligent rozie. “We should hide out here, or flee the settlement.”
“Run away?” Kayla scoffed. “No, we’re going to kill it. Or I am—and what a lot of faith you have in that new glove if you’re so scared. I just came back to collect my things and alert you two. You can follow me or be left behind.” She walked back out of the workroom.
64Bit looked around. He couldn’t leave yet—he hadn’t found the master’s auxiliary memory unit. But he also couldn’t let Kayla abandon him. 64Bit had no illusions about how long he would last without her survival skills, particularly once he ran out of the food stores under his home. He ran after Kayla.
“Wait, Kayla, stop! This is suicide—you’ll just get yourself killed if you confront Zed on your own. Take a few hours—a few days, even. We can make a plan,” 64Bit said.
Kayla shook her head. “The trail would be cold.” She kept walking toward 64Bit’s room, where her backpack was stored. “Besides, the trunk was scuffling around, moving in and out of houses like it was searching for something. I’d rather we act first than give it time to find us.”
Westley ran in front of Kayla and held up his hands. She moved to walk around him, but Westley kept shuffling sideways to stay in front of her. “You’re angry—you’re very angry. I would be, too. But it’s already dark—I can barely see. What will you do if Zed or the trunk find you in one of the houses? It will be black as pitch. You can’t have vengeance if they kill you first.”
Kayla clenched and unclenched her fists, then laid a hand on the hilt of her knife. 64Bit remembered that she broke her last knife fighting the rozie with tar on its face and wondered where she had found this one. After a moment Kayla relaxed and said, “That’s a good point. It might be worth waiting until dawn.”
64Bit let out a long, low breath. Westley had, unwittingly, bought him at least a few hours to search around the house before he had to follow Kayla off on her revenge quest. If he couldn’t find the master’s stored memories in that time, there was always the chance he could persuade Kayla to return here if they survived tomorrow—but he wanted to avoid taking that risk if he could. “Maybe we should keep a watch tonight—you know, just in case they find this house and try to sneak up on us. I can see in the dark. I’ll take first watch.”
“That’s . . . also a good idea.” Kayla looked at 64Bit suspiciously, then shouldered her way past Westley and entered 64Bit’s room. 64Bit looked through the door and saw her inspecting her backpack, making sure everything was in place. Westley nudged 64Bit’s shoulder.
“That was nearly a disaster,” he whispered.
64Bit looked up at Westley. “Where did you leave those computers you found earlier?”
Copyright © 2023 by David Ludlow
Boo Ludlow 