When Juliet woke up, she remembered. Not everything, not even close, but a lot. She felt like she remembered enough from the last couple of years that she knew who she was again. However, if she scrutinized the time since fleeing Fred’s Scrapyard, there were definite holes—huge gaps in time, people whose faces she couldn’t picture, faces she couldn’t put a name to, and events she couldn’t place on the timeline of her life.
She’d woken up on her back, lying on the soft contoured gel of the couch, and, as she lay there breathing, slowly blinking her eyes, reviewing her state of mind, she couldn’t keep her lips from curling into a slow, sly smile. She was remembering! She wasn’t broken! Even if things weren’t perfect yet, she knew unequivocally that Angel was real and that she hadn’t been a figment of her broken mind. Still smiling, she stretched, yawned, and subvocalized, “Angel, you sneaky, little devil. These dumb jerks don’t know what they’ve done, do they?”
Juliet! It worked, didn’t it? I programmed the nanites to begin broadly, not in clusters. I hoped to unlock a wide range of memories!
“Oh, it worked, but I can feel the missing stuff; it’s all over the place. I’m missing all sorts of things—details, faces, names. It doesn’t matter, though, ‘cause the big picture is here again. I remember WBD. I remember you. Go ahead and keep ‘em working; I don’t think you need to wait for me to sleep.”
If you’re sure, but if you start to feel disoriented or . . . troubled, let me know! Do you remember the lattice?
“Oh my God, Angel! The lattice! Weird! Why do you think it hasn’t been bothering me?”
The same reason it no longer bothers you when you sleep, other than the occasional true-dream . . .
“Holy shit!” Juliet almost hissed but snapped her mouth shut, satisfying herself by thinking the words as loudly as she could. “This room . . . It feels . . . Did I dream about this?”
I believe you might have. Not long ago, you had a true-dream in which you were being held captive in a room. You don’t remember?
“Not the details. No, not at all. But this,” Juliet looked around her dimly lit, white-washed prison, “feels like déjà vu.”
I believe you did dream about this scenario. In any case, as I was saying, I think you’ve acclimated yourself to the lattice. It doesn’t fire on its own that often anymore. Before I restored your memories, you had forgotten the lattice and how to access it, but your body didn’t forget about it. In the last half year or so, you only seemed to receive intrusive thoughts when someone’s emotions were particularly strong and focused on you. It’ll be interesting to see how it goes when you try to read Kline today.
“Oh, I’m looking forward to that one. What a story he spun! A trial for an alpha, huh? Sounds like he’s trying to rewrite history.” Juliet felt her eyes fill with moisture as she said, “Angel, I’m so glad you’re real. I’m so glad I remember things again. I was afraid I was losing my marbles last night.”
Don’t be too conspicuous, Juliet! They’ll see you crying. I love you, though, and I’m so glad they couldn’t remove me from you. They think they did. I’m sure they think I’m hiding, dormant in my chip.
“If you don’t want me to cry, stop saying you love me!” Juliet rolled onto her side, pushed her face into the back of the couch, and tried to laugh-cry silently. The emotions were hard to contain—relief, love, amusement, and, under it all, a vague uneasiness at half-glimpsed memories that she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around. “What do you think they’ll do if I start going through a bodyweight workout and then get into my sword forms?”
Juliet!
“I’m joking.” Juliet rolled over and hopped up, still appreciative of the material her bodysuit was made of, regardless of her restored memories. It was very comfortable; she felt supported but, at the same time, utterly unhindered in her movement. As she padded around the couch, the room's lights automatically brightened. She didn’t remember them dimming the night before. Had they done it when she’d stopped moving? Could the room tell she was sleeping, or was someone watching her? She knew the answer was probably both.
She stepped over to the drawer on the rear wall and pulled it open. She ran her fingers over the bodysuits and selected a clean one—white with blue diamond outlines on the side—along with some clean underwear. She set them on the table and then moved over to the little food machine. She selected coffee and a protein patty with “breakfast” sauce.
She chuckled at the description, her mood too good to care about the terrible food. She was herself again. Not quite whole, but whole enough to know she was going to mess with WBD in a big damn way. Something tickled the back of her mind, some dark shadow that she couldn’t grasp. The feeling was frustrating, like trying to pick something up that kept slipping through her fingers, but she pushed it away, knowing it would come to her eventually.
While she sat and drank the bitter coffee and ate the hot patty with something like bacon-flavored gravy, she subvocalized. “What about my vibroblade, my toxin needles, and all that?”
I think I could manage to deploy them. I have connections to all of your implants, but I’d struggle to operate more than one at a time. As for the needles, your captors drained the toxin. The vibroblade, though, will work. They think you can’t trigger it. The only things I can’t manage, without a proper processor and the software I developed, are your enhanced reflexes—your speed boost—and anything that requires an interface with your optics.
“Like the terahertz scan?”
Exactly, not to mention that I don’t have the data sets and subroutines for analyzing such a scan. All of my databases, custom daemons, predictive algorithms. . . well, anything that isn’t me is stored on my PAI chip and the memory chips from your data port. I can re-create most of them if I have to, but we’ll need something with more robust processing power and storage. Storage is the big one; even with the limited processing I can eke out of your cybernetics, I just don’t have any place to store anything I create.
“What about my data port? The co-processor and mem—”
They pulled those, likely hoping to figure out what I’ve been up to. They’ll be disappointed when they find everything encrypted.
“Well,” Juliet subvocalized, swallowing her last bite of protein patty, “I’ll try to fish some processing power out of Kline.” She threw her plate and cup into the recycle chute, grabbed her clean clothes, and went into the bathroom. When she undressed, she put her dirty clothes into another chute labeled “Laundry” and then took a long, relaxing shower. She brushed her teeth while she stood in the rainfall-like deluge. After she’d washed with soap and shampoo, she sat on the floor, closing her eyes and enjoying the small pleasure of wasting WBD’s water.
While she sat there, she focused on memories that felt recent, memories of training and sword practice with Tanaka. She knew she’d spent months with him; that was clear, but those months were full of holes in her mind. Still, she tried to recapture what she’d learned. She closed her eyes, focused on the memories that were whole, and tried to let her body remember her training for her.
In her mind, she worked through her forms, strikes, parries, ripostes, counters, and every complicated gambit she could remember. She visualized herself completing them all, slowly flexing each muscle without moving her limbs. When she finished and stood, rising from her cross-legged position on the wet plasteel floor effortlessly, she felt relaxed and ready to face whatever her strange situation would bring.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
She applied her deodorant—some kind of powdery, spring-fresh scent—and liberally slathered lotion over her body before getting dressed. As far as she was concerned, they could enjoy the show if they wanted to spy on her while she was in there. When she emerged from the bathroom, she was a little startled to find Kline sitting on her couch.
“Juliet! Did you have a good sleep?” He wore a dark suit almost identical to the one he’d worn the day before, but his tie was different—yellow that was almost gold.
“I slept all right, Mr. Kline. Wouldn’t have minded a blanket and pillow.” She walked over to the food dispenser and ordered a cup of cola. “Thirsty?” Her mind had begun to race at the sight of him, but she pushed down her momentary panic. She didn’t need to be worried. He should be worried. The thought made her smile, but at the same time, she was annoyed. She’d just woken up, barely taken a shower, albeit a long one, and now he was here. She’d hoped for some more time with Angel. Some time to decompress and review what she remembered. She knew what her situation was, but she couldn’t remember some pertinent details. How did she even get captured?
“Um, no, thank you.” He frowned and stood up. “Shoot, Juliet! This is my fault—about the blanket, I mean. I should have given you a tour of your space.” He reached down, tucked his fingers under the bottom edge of the couch, and pulled. A nearly invisible drawer slid out, and as Juliet walked over with her plastic cup of fizzing cola, she saw several folded blankets of varying thickness and two small, square pillows.
“Anything else you didn’t show me? Like, maybe where I can get something to eat that doesn’t taste like it was created in a pet food factory?” As she said the words, Juliet regretted them. She would have loved that meal back when she worked at Fred’s; it was a damn sight better than what she used to purchase from the Helios vending machines.
Kline smiled and pushed the drawer closed before sitting down again. He chuckled softly, shaking his head. “You are feeling better, aren’t you? You seem . . . different than you did last night.”
Juliet might have been worried that she’d overplayed her hand, that she was being a little too upbeat, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. Instead, she pictured herself grabbing Kline in a rear naked chokehold. She imagined squeezing his neck in her cybernetic arm until blood seeped from his eyes. With that image in her mind, she grinned, sat beside him, looked right into his eyes, and said, “A good night’s sleep does wonders. What kind of padding is in this couch? I wish I could get one in my apartment, but the Helios Arcology has built-in beds, and I don’t think you can change the mattresses out.”
“Uh . . .” Kline chuckled and shifted, looking away from her intent gaze, his eyes flickering toward the door. “I’m not sure. It feels like memory gel of some sort. Juliet, you don’t live in the arcology anymore. Remember?”
“Oh, right. Sorry, but that all seems so wild! I have to believe you, though. There are things that are different about me. Why am I all covered in scars?” As she asked the question, Juliet settled her drink between her hands, tried to relax, and looked into Kline’s eyes again. They were high-end optics. She could see that much right away. Currently they were colored a neutral kind of green-blue that looked almost natural, but they were too clear, too pretty. While she listened to his response, she inhaled and willed his thoughts to come to her.
“Remember I told you about the experimental PAI going haywire? Well, it had you really mixed up for a long while. You went on the run, hiding from our technicians who wanted to remove the device and help you recover. While you were out in the wild, you did all sorts of things to survive and stay hidden, often at the urging of the PAI’s rogue personality.” Juliet nodded along to his words while his thoughts came to her in phrases and scattered images:
Not my fault. This thought was accompanied by the image of a horrible corpse in a plastic, see-through body bag. It was large and impossible to recognize as male or female. The remaining flesh was discolored and swollen, sloughing off the bones here and there, more liquid than solid.
Running and hiding. Where’d you go? Juliet caught flashes of airports, long empty roads, burning buildings, a weeping man tied to a chair, Kline’s face in a mirror, haggard with bloodshot eyes.
Rogue. Angel! Another image came with these thoughts: Angel’s PAI chip, sitting in a dock, a dozen wires leading from it into server-sized data cubes.
“So, the PAI had a, what did you say? Rogue personality? That sounds like the horror stories they taught us about the war—”
“No, no. Nothing that nefarious. The PAI thought it was alive, a true-AI, and it had some very convincing stories to tell you. Basically, Juliet, it brainwashed you. You shouldn’t feel bad about that; it was in your head, you know? It saw everything you did, talked to you constantly, and was very, very smart. Imagine having a genius-level psychiatrist who could see your every move and had full access to you all the time. How easy would it be for such a person to convince you of a lie?”
“Gosh.” Juliet blew out a pent-up breath and leaned back on the couch. “I hope you destroyed it!”
Kline cleared his throat and chuckled, shaking his head. Juliet could tell he was trying to choose his words carefully. “Um, I can see how you might feel that way. The thing is, the two of you made an amazing team. You got into a lot of wild adventures while on the run, and still, we were utterly unable to find you. We think the PAI’s personality, Angel, might be worth salvaging. We kind of hope that you’ll be able to convince it that we don’t mean any harm to either of you. In fact, we want to work with the two of you.”
Juliet snorted, shaking her head. “That seems insane. You just told me this AI convinced me to go on the run and that it somehow wiped my memory of the last two years! I’ve got bullet scars all over my body, Mr. Kline! You want me to put that thing back in my head?”
Amazing, Juliet! You’re doing a great job! Juliet wanted to smile at Angel’s encouragement, but she kept the skeptical expression on her face.
“I understand, Juliet. I really do. I think with some therapy, some education, and the gradual restoration of your memories, you might come around to see things my way. This is a massive opportunity for you. Wouldn’t you rather have an important role at a major corporation, earning good money, than go back to cutting scrap, struggling to pay rent?”
“You say that like you can restore my memories whenever you want.” Juliet tried again to listen to Kline’s thoughts as she fished. They came to her suddenly and powerfully, and as she listened, she lost track of the words coming out of his mouth.
A few memories every week when we do the scan. Slow and steady wins the race. Juliet stared, slack-jawed, watching an image drifting out of Kline’s mind into hers. She saw his calendar on an AUI, almost like she were looking at her own display, and she read the notes on the highlighted week:
Monday:
* Juliet – introduction.
* Call Rachel.
* Set up office.
Tuesday:
* Juliet – begin phase 1, tour, lunch.
* Debrief – assign requests?
* Call Rachel
* Meet Montclair.
Wednesday:
* Juliet – Psych visit, 1-on-1, lunch.
* Team debrief.
* G.
Thursday:
* Listener (!!) – gipple?
* Debrief
* Montclair
Friday:
* Juliet – Full scan
* Debrief
* G. & Board (!!!)
“Are you all right? Something I said?” Kline reached out to touch Juliet's shoulder, and she startled, blinking her eyes rapidly, banishing the image she’d pulled out of Kline’s head.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” She laughed, and though it was a nervous laugh, she felt like she did a good job passing it off as more of a confused one. “I . . . I don’t know what happened. I just blanked out.” She licked her lips and didn’t have to pretend; her mouth had gone dry at the notes she’d seen on Kline’s calendar.
His hand was still on her shoulder, and he gently squeezed it. Juliet wanted to recoil, but instead, she leaned into it, embracing the tiny part of her that appreciated the human touch. “That’s all right, Juliet. You’ve been through a lot. I can’t imagine what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling. I’d be surprised if you could stay focused on a boring guy like me.”
“Um, I was going to ask . . .” Juliet smiled, trying to make it look nervous, as she glanced into his eyes and then away, toward the door. “Could I get a clock in here? I wish I knew what time it was, what day it was. Like, even the day of the week.”
Kline nodded and rubbed his chin. “Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem. I don’t know how that could mess up your therapy. Anything else?”
“Can I be honest?”
“Of course! I insist!”
“Well, there’s a lot to be desired about this room. It feels more like a prison! I wasn’t joking about that food dispenser. Couldn’t I visit a cafeteria?” She didn’t want to give him a chance to reject each idea one by one, so she began to rapidly list off things she’d thought of while in the shower. “I’d love some books to read! I appreciate classics, like old, old science fiction and fantasy. Maybe I could paint my room? These walls are so boring and severe! Gosh, Mr. Kline, what I wouldn’t give to be able to watch a vid or play a simple game! If I’m going to be here for a while, couldn’t I get a new PAI? I understand the one I had malfunctioned, but surely, I could have a simple one like my old Tig. Hey! Do you have Tig? Maybe I could have him back? If not, maybe a deck? A deck with some movies? I have optics, right? Could I connect to a deck and watch old shows or movies? I’ve got this weird wire in my arm. I can plug that in, right? I’m going to go stir-crazy staring at these walls. What about a gym? Could I go out for a walk?”
“Woah! Easy there, Juliet! Give me a second to think!” He laughed, and it wasn’t lost on Juliet that he still had his hand on her shoulder while they sat facing each other on the couch.
“Sorry.” She smiled demurely, ducking her head and looking up through her lashes at him. If he was going to get touchy-feely, she was going to give him something to think about.
“Tell you what, my PAI just populated a list of all those requests, and I’ll fill ‘em as much as I can, okay? I can take care of a few of your problems right now, though, if you’re up for it. I wanted to give you a little tour of the facility. At least the parts that you’ll be visiting regularly. One of the stops involves a gym, and I figured we could wrap up my time with you today by having lunch. We can eat at the executive lounge—they have a chef on staff and real food, not . . . whatever is in that machine.” He pointed to the food dispenser. “How does that sound?”
“It sounds really nice, Mr. Kline.”
“Alec! Call me ‘Alec’ or just plain ‘Kline.’ That’s what my friends and coworkers do.”
As she nodded and stood, she subvocalized, “Looks like it’s Tuesday, Angel, and we’ve got exactly two days to figure out what a ‘listener’ is and what they know about the lattice. Kline has a note on his calendar that mentions a ‘gipple.’ That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
Do you think he’s referring to the GIPEL?
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
“Okay, Juliet,” Kline said, oblivious to the side conversation. “We’re going to be walking through high-security passages, so don’t be alarmed when you see armed personnel. Remember, they’re here to protect you. It’s imperative that you stay close and only go where I lead, all right? Otherwise, they’ll revoke my permission to guide you around and make us stay locked down in this area.”
Juliet nodded and watched as Kline approached the door. It beeped, clicked, and thunked. Then it slowly swung open, and Juliet had to clench her fists to keep from leaping into an attack. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t armed, she couldn’t use her speed boost, and she had no idea where she was or what she was up against. No, she had to be patient and bide her time. She had to take this bit by bit.