Virch code, p.4
Virch Code, page 4
A thank-you emoji popped up on the screen.
She ignored it. Kept scrolling. Daelia hated these two-dimensional command line views, but after a few moments, she was fairly certain the thing was an emergent.
Unity can puppet emergents, she reminded herself, but couldn’t quite believe that was what was going on here. Those were noncommunicative. This one was definitely lower-class, but clearly able to use TGLP to get its point across.
Another set of emojis came up. A tadpole. A finger, pointing out of the screen.
She’d seen that before.
It was the closest thing in the emoji database for spawn.
“Yeah, I’m Daelia Hall,” she muttered back.
A bird. The tadpole. An arrow, pointed in the direction of the door.
It was an emergent. Had to be, asking to go with her like that. But that didn’t mean she was going to take it along. It could be tracked. It could be monitored.
“You’re safe,” she told the little abiota. “You’re back on power. You can stay here.”
More emojis, shotgunned out in a long sequence this time. The bird. An open door, repeated over and over. A helping figure. More doors. More buildings.
Daelia shook her head. “I’ve been here before. I don’t need help.”
The screen went dark for a moment. Then, a photograph flashed up. Not a stock photo from the internet, but something the abiota must have already had in its own memory banks.
An image of a car.
Not just any car.
Ginger.
Followed by a repeating pattern of bird, green arrow, bird.
Daelia took that to mean it was the abiota’s AR form. Itself. It was saying me. Did it want to leave too?
A moan drew her attention.
Daelia looked up at the man on the bed. Still lost in whatever he’d asked the harness to do to him. At least he wasn’t paying attention to her. The sounds he was making made it hard to think.
“Where did you see her?” Daelia asked the abiota, clutching the case tightly.
A map app icon flashed up, then another picture, this time, of a garage.
Daelia considered this. Residents of the booville weren’t authorized private vehicles; any journey inside Austin’s core these days was undertaken either on mass transit or by foot. All vehicles had to be left…where, again? The convention center? Union Station?
Well. That was the way she needed to go anyway. And finding Ginger would be way easier than trying to buy a train ticket.
“Can you take me there?” Daelia asked.
A thumbs-up. The bird and arrow again.
“Yeah, I get it,” Daelia said. “Okay. Fine. Do you have a mobile battery pack?”
Another thumbs-up, and then an arrow, pointing up. It took Daelia a moment to realize it was indicating a direction.
Following the arrow, Daelia located its chargers.
On the room’s desk shelf, there were five in a little box, along with spare charging cables and a few little accessories. All of them were old, the plastic worn and smudged with accumulated grease and dirt. Even with that, Daelia knew they must have represented either serious foresight or serious investment. The guy had either kept these things with him all these years or bought them somewhere at considerable expense.
She found that hard to square with the scene in the room.
Didn’t matter, though. His moans were changing, coming closer together, and judging from that movement, right there, he was probably pretty close to being done.
He’d probably take the thing off after that. Bot programs weren’t very good at cuddling.
Moving as quickly as she could, Daelia tested each pack in turn. Two were full, one was partial. That one she plugged into a wall charger. Then she set to work on her panoply.
The thing had gotten her down this far, to this room, past those security kugus, but she wasn’t sure how much longer her luck would hold. The charge was fading. It too needed a recharge and a systems check.
As she checked it over, Daelia felt an unexpected pang of… regret? Guilt? Sadness. Maybe it was sadness. It was her own damn fault she was in this mess, and people she cared about had been hurt because of it. Argo. June. June had been so against this course of action, so opposed to Daelia going back to Ware and doing what she’d done.
She couldn’t help but feel that June had been right. All those people back at Ware were dead because of her. Weren’t they?
Serket killed them, she reminded herself. Not you. Serket. For Unity. And you’re going to find out why, so they don’t kill anymore.
It seemed like an insane thing to put on herself. What could she do, one girl alone with a busted arm? But it was either believe she had something to do, something to move against, or wait here for Robinson to come back and take her off to meet Unity.
Not really a choice at all.
The panoply didn’t make her invisible from AR—she needed to get the suit’s batteries recharged for that—but it was better than walking out into the largest booville in North America with her features naked and open to whatever camera happened to be looking. A few quick tugs and the hood was back over her head, her messy ponytail pulled out the hole in the back.
Daelia then yanked the battery pack, scooped everything into a reusable shopping bag she found in the closet, and went to retrieve the emergent’s machine body.
She snapped the phone into its battery. “You ready?” she asked.
A tadpole. A bird. A thumbs-up.
The man screamed out in weary, worn-out pleasure and arched off the bed, the sheet slipping all the way off.
Daelia double-timed it out.
She hated those damn harnesses.
6
“We should have stayed behind,” Argo grumbled, his attention on the lake beyond the kitchen slider doors. “We should have looked for her. I knew something was wrong.”
“You had a hole in your face, Captain.”
“Why aren’t you more worried about this?”
“You think I’m not worried?” An edge of anger crept into Lee’s voice. “Last thing Daelia needs us doing, either of us, is panicking. We need to regroup.”
“Regroup? Why? We know where she is.”
“We know where the Domain Array is looking for her. If we can even believe Chalk.”
Argo narrowed his eyes, thinking about the shit Lee had pulled with the hack, but didn’t say anything about it. “You think we can’t?”
“I think it’s not beyond the Domain Array to send out multiple false bulletins just to obscure Daelia’s trail.”
“They would try to protect her, right?” Argo asked.
“Why do you say that?”
“Don’t they care about your daughter? Bellona’s part of the administrative team, right?”
Lee leaned on the glass, eyes unfocusing a little. “That’s the story we were all told.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“Sometimes, Argo, what an abiota interprets as a caring gesture is the worst possible thing for a human.”
Argo was too tired, too shaky from the local anesthetics to figure out what the hell Lee meant by that. “We’ve got to get to her.”
“We have no idea where she is.”
“Chalk—”
“Needs a better Internet connection, a more protected Internet connection, than what we’ve got here,” Lee said. “We’re going to head back down to base, get Chalk hooked up, maybe have a little conversation with the Domain Array. Figure this out. Then go do whatever it is we’ve got to do.”
“Lee…”
“This is way beyond what either you or me can handle on our own.”
“You’re going to report this?”
“What? Fuck, no.”
Argo felt heat wash through him. Embarrassment? Some weird side effect from his body metabolizing the local anesthetic? “So why the hell go back to base? Why not go straight to Austin and start looking?”
Lee gave him a look that was almost pitying. “You ever been to Austin?”
“No,” he said, and his stomach growled at him. “Hey, Jimenez, you got any food in this place?”
The medic shook himself. “Yeah, yeah, what the hell? Come on, let’s get you something to eat before my kids wake up.”
“You’ve got kids here?” Argo asked, suddenly alarmed. He hadn’t noticed any toys or bikes or anything like that, but then, he hadn’t really been looking. The sudden thought of Unity kugus showing up here made him sick to his stomach.
Or maybe that was the numbing in his cheek wearing off. Hard to tell.
Jimenez didn’t seem fazed, though, and waved at the cabinet. “I can offer you cereal, cereal, and cereal. I think there’s even an option in here that’s not loaded down with sugar.”
The boxes were all brightly colored with huge illustrations on the side. AR-enabled too, but since children weren’t allowed wearable AR devices under federal law, all that imagery was aimed at moms. Sales copy. Nutritional info and pull quotes from online reviews.
“Corn flakes are fine,” Argo said.
He took his cereal and wandered back over to the window. Despite the urban sprawl, it was nice to see the water. He’d had no idea there was a lake this close to the city.
Steve had pulled a laptop out, tuned to a news stream. It was mindless chatter at first, and then, on came a voice Argo recognized.
“Yes, Lisa, it certainly is looking like an interesting day up here at the Hempstead Transit Station. The sun isn’t even up yet, and already, there’s a crowd forming.”
Argo turned. “Is that ChatBot?”
“Yeah, looks like. Heard they were in town.”
“They are. They’ve been bugging the shit out of the base commander down at Ellington for the past week,” Argo confirmed, and went over to see. “What is this?”
Jimenez shrugged. “There’s some kind of protest rally being held today. Looks like everybody’s gathering at Hempstead, then probably going to march down to City Hall down on 11th Street. Good day for it. It’s going to be cold but sunny.”
“Rally about what?”
The medic pointed.
On-screen, Calliope’s kugu was holding out a bedazzled microphone to a man and woman struggling to set up a large canopy tent. “And why are you here?” she asked sweetly.
The woman stopped. Came over. “With all the lies and bad information about what’s been going on with Unity, especially here in our own state, we just want some answers. Why is anybody in the government going along with this bullshit?”
She had a shirt on, Argo noticed, with a screen-printed logo. A sideways spearhead, the Texas flag superimposed within it. A red and white blade with a white star on the blue haft.
“We didn’t vote for this,” the man added.
“But this is why humans elect officials, is it not?” Calliope asked. “To represent them in such matters?”
“It’s different for y’all,” the man grunted. “Y’all have the Domain Array and hierarchies and whatnot. You get heard. All your opinions are weighed and considered. Us? We get people who run on one thing, then do another when they get in.”
“Did anybody run on how to manage alien first contact?” Calliope asked in that same sweet tone. Innocent.
The man glared at her. Went back to what he was doing.
The screen split, Lisa on the other side. Her hair was big this morning. Extra big. Texas big. Argo wondered if she was intentionally trying to parody something. Old newscasters? Hard to tell with her. Hard to tell with any of the big influencers on ByYou, where they stopped and their online personas began. How much of it was an act. How much of it was manipulation.
“For our folks watching from home, I want you to understand that this is hard. It’s hard, it’s hard to be on camera,” Lisa said sweetly. “We’ll cut him some slack. I’m sure everyone has good reasons for being out this morning. It’s okay to have questions about Unity. You wouldn’t be thinking for yourself if you didn’t have questions.”
“It is,” Calliope replied, nodding her mechanical head. “But I’m not sure this is the proper way to redress one’s concerns. Seems like a bit of a rabble right now.”
The camera panned out, taking in the scene.
“Shit, they printed signs.”
Argo turned. There was Garcia, a bowl of cereal in his hands as well. “What do you mean?” the pilot asked.
Garcia pointed at the screen. “These are printed. I mean, it’s done with one of those big-ass machines that cut stuff out. You can put markers in them and have them write for you, so it looks handmade, but it’s not. You can tell. Some of the letters are the same.”
Argo thought he could see it, now that the sergeant had pointed it out. Seemed obvious, actually. “What would be the point of that?”
Garcia shrugged. “You want a big protest with a unified message, but don’t want it to look organized.”
“There are a lot of people pissed about Unity,” Jimenez said with a nod. “Did you hear about San Antonio?”
“How did you?” Lee asked. He was considering the cereal options on the counter.
“Is everybody just going to raid my fucking kitchen?” Jimenez demanded and raised a hand. “Don’t you dare eat any of that, Lee. Put down that box of sugar shit and get some instant oatmeal and a banana.”
“Instant oatmeal, really?”
“You want to develop refeeding syndrome, be my guest,” the medic snapped, and leaned back in his chair. Calliope and Lisa were talking now about how many nice people Calliope was meeting at the train station. “Rumors are getting around. You know how it is, Lee. No matter how hard it is to find your way into the Chans, people start doing it when Galatea’s information flow starts being obviously manipulated.”
“Obvious how?”
He shrugged again. “Social media posts being changed, videos being taken down. Information missing.”
Lee pursed his lips and looked at Argo. “We need to get moving. If this gets out of hand today, we could be looking at road closures, loss of freeway access. Hey, Steve, you remember the anti-fed protests back in ’26?”
“You think it could get that bad?” Jimenez said.
Lee grunted. “Seems an awful lot like it, doesn’t it?”
“It’s just some idiots at the train station,” Garcia protested. “It’s all just bullshit.”
“Protesting Unity doesn’t seem like the worst move right now,” Argo said mildly.
“Protesting what?” Garcia asked.
Argo pointed at his own face. “Unity is a problem.”
“Yeah, but these people don’t know that Unity’s a fucking fraud,” Garcia protested, waving a hand at the computer screen. “All they know is that somebody is saying something online and they’re upset about—”
“Wait. What do you mean?” Jimenez interjected suddenly. “What do you mean by that, Unity’s a fraud?”
Argo rubbed a hand across his face. “Lee?”
“Well, look at that,” Lee reported from the kitchen, eating something that was most definitely not a banana. “August is finally here.”
7
Even after the previous night’s experience with Serket—or maybe because of it—Daelia was a mess of nerves as she made her way out of the residence tower.
She didn’t dare take the elevators. Instead, she stuck to the back stairwells, making her way down, floor by floor, as fast as she dared. The lower floors were shared spaces, and busy. Cafeteria, laundry, remote work offices, even daycare, all was located there, crowded with people just starting their day, or coming back from one of the evening shifts at the manufacturing center, or with the kugus that ran so many of the functions here. The atmosphere was bustling, friendly, lots of laughter, lots of talking.
Daelia kept her head down and her pace quick, passing through it all as quickly as she could.
Soon, she was on the main floor, headed out the doors. Nobody—human or abiota—gave her so much as a second glance.
Daelia had shoved her left hand under her right elbow, holding on to it. The limb still felt awkward and heavy. She would have preferred a sling or something, but there hadn’t been time to make one and it might have attracted attention anyway.
Without a monocle, she kept her eyes firmly fixed to the purloined phone and walked out into the cool morning. Even with her panoply on the fritz, nobody would pay attention to some solitary girl staring down at her cell phone.
Daelia headed north. Here, at least, she knew where to go.
As the state capital and a major tech manufacturing hub, Austin had been a primary target for the CCP during the Five Days War. Most of the central area of the city had been flattened. But the outlying suburbs had remained largely intact, and Texas as a whole had been more functional than many places; federal aid and insurance money had gone to the hardest-hit areas of New England and the Pacific Northwest.
Austin, on the other hand, had been rebuilt by industry.
Austin’s resident tech companies had pulled their capital together and reinvested it in the region. Omphalos had led that charge, pledging billions to rebuild. The only catch, city planners had been told, was that Omphalos wanted control of the master planning.
At the heart of the new Austin, they’d said, would be their most ambitious basic universal income community yet.
They’d been advocating for it for years. A brand-new urban model, they claimed, that leveraged the strengths of both abiota and humans to create safe, clean, prosperous cities without the need for mass outlays of public money.
There was already a small community in the area—the Retreat at Spicewood—that had been doing quite well, and other proof-of-concept boovilles had been likewise successful.
High on enthusiasm and short on options, the Austin City Council had agreed. Now, almost a decade on, the truth had proven somewhat more complicated.
She had no desire to spend any more time here than was absolutely necessary.
“Which way to the garage?” she muttered.
A map appeared on the screen, a path indicated in green. North.
“Surprised to see an emergent here,” Daelia commented as she walked, holding the phone up to her mouth. “I thought the governing predictives kept you out.”
