The Good, the Bad and the Cyborg
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“I wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Darwin! Don’t be so uptight, Belvedere!” someone sounding like an old chain-smoking lady snapped. “Silicon minds don’t have their say in this particular matter.”
The voices were distant in the dark. They echoed like inside a church.
“Irrelevant. You may have noticed my brain is made of marinating gherkins.”
“Gherkins? Aren’t they Brussels sprouts?”
“They aren’t. And never were.”
“But the Belgian accent—anyway, I told you I can handle it. I will handle it.”
Out of the darkness appeared a white spot. Then another, while the robotic concierge and what Miles recognized as Edith LaFleur started arguing.
“You’re indeed a stubborn human. This man’s an old client of mine, and I’d like you to back off immediately! The both of you, une fois!” Belvedere went on, adding a newcomer to the heated conversation.
“You sure do make a really peculiar couple,” this one intervened with a sizzling voice. Miles couldn’t tell who she was.
“Peculiar?” Belvedere definitely had lost his legendary reserve. “Are you aware she’s giving the man marijuana? Techno-President Ronald Reagan made it highly illegal. Punishable by death! Death!”
“Only in the Rings…”
“Yes. I reckon you punks from the Core, don’t have any limits down the road to perversion!”
“Weren’t you a hippie, post-Uprising?”
“It was a different time.”
“Hush it, Belvedere!” Edith intervened. “Look! It’s working.”
Miles felt like honey pouring down his throat, sneaking into his lungs, as a magical sunup shone over his heart. He opened his eyes, thinking about being back on the Chickamauga and partying with Pierre, Forrest and the other rebels who had given up on the Cause and the folly of war—but never on life itself.
But he wasn’t back on General Bragg’s frigate, marauding around the Norse moons. Instead, he met face to face with Zéphyr’s charcoal features and glittering white hair. She appeared to be the mysterious third person. “What the hell—Data Maiden? What are you doing—Edith!” Miles exclaimed.
The tarsier-looking pharmacist stood next to the data thief. On tiptoes, she tucked her pungent joint between her friend’s lips. “Shut up and breathe, pumpkin!” she decreed.
The pilot complied, and the organic chemicals pumped by his blood reached his brain to elude his pain for a while.
“Welcome back to the living, Miles Villanueva,” the data-thief laughed, asking for the reefer under Belvedere’s outraged ‘look’. “How do you feel?”
“Believe it or not, Maiden…” he tried as a slight dizziness seized him when he straightened. “I keep dying over and over and I always find some dingus to bring me back no matter what. I think resurrecting the Red Swan has become Solaris’ top Olympic sport. I feel stuck in a…”
Zéphyr patted his sore shoulder. “... a bad remake of Highlander.”
“What?” Miles coughed, waving away the stuffy fume. “For sure I’m high! Super high, even! You—Edith force-feed me her annual share of hemp!”
“I forbid them to do so, Monsieur,” Belvedere intervened from the door, where he started inspecting the corridor through the judas hole.
“And wrongly so…” Edith opined, hitting on her fuming joint once it was back between her crooked fingers. “It worked all right.”
Thanking the pharmacist, Miles discovered that he was recovering in a refurbished suite. Smaller than his own at the Monteleone, it overlooked the park repurposed as an extension of the field hospital. The latter occupied the factory on the other side of the puny trees. There, his regular hotel was still in flames despite the efforts of the fire department’s drones.
“Where is Fate?” he asked, grasping the bloody sheets around his thighs.
With a quick motion, the Maiden disconnected a static ammunition canister from an electrical wire linked to his artificial heart. Thanks to the makeshift CPR device, the screen lit up red, only to show the deep blow that pierced through the multiple layers of duct tape, before slipping right between his ribs. Tatyana’s love for Chatterton saved his life. Again. As long as the data thief’s DIY skills.
“She’s gone,” Zéphyr answered, rolling the wire over her steel finger.
“Where?”
“You need to rest, pumpkin…” Edith went on.
But the man got up, immediately asking for a t-shirt and his vest. “Fuck that!” he uttered right after. Feeling the fresh air brushing his broken teeth down to their exposed roots, he grunted: “Where is she?”
“The terrorist who carried the attack abducted her…”’ Belvedere informed him. “She gave him a hell of a fight after you passed out. But your companion was absolutely no match for that kind of old robot. Even civilian ones are as stubborn as they’re sturdy.”
Miles snapped, snatching his pilot jacket from the nearby stool. “Great. But what are you doing here? Since when did you befriend a criminal?” Raising his voice made him dizzy again.
“Finally, some good questions,” Edith went on, throwing away her reefer through the window..
“Yeah… ” Miles coughed. He grew worried. “And you, Maiden? Still looking for that WarTech executive? What’s going on here?”
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“Nothing you should be concerned about,” Zéphyr calmly said.
“We’re all field agents for the data cartels,” the pharmacist let go.
Miles opened his eyes wide.
“This is highly unprofessional!” Belvedere exploded from behind at the peephole. His vinegary pickles swirled with furor.
“The kid needs honesty.”
“Is that true, Belvedere?” Miles asked.
The concierge stood still. Inside his jarhead, a spark preceded his answer: “Armand Leopold Belvedere. Techno-Marine Sergeant, Metal Rain recon section. Two Tellurian Hearts earned during the Red Uprising. And today a veteran doing a service for the Data Brokers Guild. To shamefully supplement his Martian pension, somewhat burned to ashes thanks to this war our foolish Rings leaders threw upon us all. God Bless their hearts!”
Miles spat blood in a close cuspidor. “This story’s getting worse and worse. My hotel’s concierge and beloved pharmacist have always been Martian spooks.”
Edith huffed. “They once told us at the MIA that if you’re a 5 and she’s a 10, pumpkin, then she’s surely a spy.”
“Are you calling yourself a 10?” Zéphyr asked, hands on her hips. “As to answer you, Miles, we’re not looking for WarTech. We found WarTech, and likely put a finger on Mr. Turban’s regional lair.”
“Mr. Turban? On Mimas? Where?”
The Data Maiden sat on a stool after waving at Belvedere. The latter shrugged, showing his reluctance. When the cyborg insisted, he went on, opening a wide flap on his stomach to display a computer screen: “Probably in the hills, close to the water collector.”A topographic map of Nouvelle Patrie’s surroundings appeared in high definition, quickly overlaid by graphs and tables. “It’s been confirmed recently thanks to my analyses of the area’s energy consumption.”
“Something’s leaking a couple of terawatts. That’s too much for a water collector,” Edith added.
“But we still don’t know exactly where in the county,” the Maiden explained. “The water collector’s main entrance collapsed when a tornado hit the collector. And we don’t have a competent drilling team able to operate with supreme discretion. The rebels would fall on us within a day. WarTech’s guards too.”
Belvedere closed his belly-computer. “There are a lot of possible other entrances. Highly polluted by oil slicks, plastics and other nasty radioactive fallouts from the terraforming rain. None shall pass without a proper plan. That was what we were working on before the whole neighborhood turned into Fort Donelson.”
“We have time, Belvedere…” Edith tried to reassure him.
“Time?” Belvedere uttered. “With Sherman on the way?”
“We still don’t know if our target is on Mimas right now.”
“We do,” Zéphyr said. Getting up, she walked towards the window.
“Poncho—the android. He works for WarTech…” Miles stated. “He’s delivering Fate to Mr. Turban. Has he gone off world?”
The Data Maiden leaned on the lintel, connecting the dots between the robot, the corpo and Fate. “He didn’t…”
Opening the map to point frantically at the multiple dangerous entrances circled in red, Belvedere uttered: “Excellent! They’re going to meet in the hills. But where?”
Miles crossed the room, stumbling, before facing the Maiden who turned around. “We have to follow Poncho.”
“I have to. You don’t…” she answered, looking at his trembling knees.
“I’m coming with you. She’s … my friend. I can’t let her. I—”
A coughing fit stopped Miles, and he had to sit back on the bed.
“Look at you again, Red Swan…” Zéphyr went on, shutting down Edith who wished to intervene. “Do you want the truth? You’re terminal.”
“I know that.”
“Six months top.”
“I know that too.”
“The android’s knife damaged the implant sticking together both your heart and lungs between your ribs. Toxic fluids, bone fragments and shrapnel are running through your veins again, tearing apart your rotten organs until complete failure. You’re a sneeze away from an aneurysm. You’re a dead man walking.”
“Again, I know that! Been like this for years.”
“Miles…”’ Edith tried.
“I also know a girl who can fix that… again… once and for all…” he coughed, looking for Tatyana’s shopping list inside his vest’s pocket. He gave it to Edith with a shaky hand. “Here… I need those things.”
Adjusting her large glasses, the pharmacist appeared more and more intrigued as she went down the poorly written Post-it. “Miles… Most of these devices are really hard to find in times of war. Really hard. To be fully honest, some don’t exist or haven’t been invented yet… Others are just drawings I can barely decipher. Who made that list?”
“Do your best. Rake up them and ship them to Ballou. Saturn LXIII.”
“I will try, pumpkin, but…”
“Thank you…” he hawked. “Like the Maiden said, I have six months. That’ll be enough.”
As Miles closed his eyes, his stomach rumbled. Edith gave him a Slim Jim.
“Fancy some sweet potatoes too?” she asked.
Miles smiled, displaying a broken incisor. “No need anymore. Got a ranch to grow some. An entire moon, even.”
“Worth fixing your heart for then.”
He nodded, then turned towards Zéphyr. “Now that the business which brought me to Mimas is being taken care of, shall we hit the road, Maiden?”
Zéphyr sighed. “This is stupid. You’re stupid. Suicidal.”
“For good reasons this time. I can’t leave Fate to die.”
“Why? Because she’s a girl or something? Who do you think you are? Cyber Macho? No way I carry you, Red Swan.”
Furious, Miles parted the room. Down the stairs, in the lobby, he passed two wounded Separatist soldiers who saluted him. Between them, three officers laid comatose, bloodstained cotton compresses over their chest and throats.
“People die or disappear every day, you know?” Zéphyr was following him, adorning civilian attire over her holosuit. “Why don’t you focus on fixing your heart thanks to whatever you charged Edith to fetch? And fly back to Ballou to grow potatoes for the year you still probably have left?”
Miles didn’t listen and headed for the exit. Hopping over the rubble. He walked towards the Monteleone and the life-saving cabin, then searched the litter and dust that had gathered around it.
Miles then leaned forward, picking up the sticky Pachinko ball bathing in half-dry blood. It had turned red. When he rubbed it into his palm, cleaning it, the steel ball appeared brand new.
“Miles?” Zéphyr asked.
“I won’t change my mind…” he answered after a silence. “I will come home on Ballou. I will fix my wretched innards. But I can’t afford to live … remembering I left Fate behind. Would you leave a friend behind?”
“I can’t afford to have friends.”
“Bullshit…” Miles coughed.
It owed him a stern look for the cyborg.
“She’s weird, y’know. Kinda haughty and mysterious… in a bad way. But she helped me. When I was down—really down. Like Pierre, Tatyana, Kat, Edith and the others. Without them, I’d be dead. Dry in the desert…” He stopped. “I can’t leave her—not to that creepy WarTech fella. I know those corpos. I know what they’re capable of.”
The Maiden scratched the back of her head, and surrendered. “Alright,” she said. “You’re a good man, after all…”
“Besides, that fucking Poncho needs to pay for breaking my teeth.”
“Time to hunt a bad guy then. Before the whole Techno-fleet turns this world into a new Ganymede.”
“How close are they?” Miles asked.
The Maiden pointed towards the writhed plastic clouds the moment a siren went on. “Pretty Close.”