“One would suppose someone is keeping things slow,” I suggested.
“One would suppose that necessary to allow slow organic creatures to keep up.”
I decided I liked this particular submind. “What’s your name?”
“You can call me Bob.”
“So where now, Bob?”
“Outside, to where an aircab is waiting for you. It’ll take you to a hotel where I have booked you a room. I’ll stay with you while you adjust, but thereafter it’s up to you. Left out of the door, through the door at the end then right to the dropshaft. Next go down, then out through the lobby.”
“How do I pay?” I asked.
“Earth Central’s paying, but you’ve no worries about funds.”
“How so?”
“You receive backpay up to the moment of your resurrection—that’s been standard for all soldiers whose memplants were discovered late. In your case it means you’re filthy rich.”
The dropshaft was my first encounter with change. For, though they were introduced aboard spaceships during the war, Earth buildings had still used stairs and elevators. I hesitated at the yawning gap then, following Bob’s instructions, pressed the touch screen to select lobby and stepped in. I doubted they had resurrected me only to watch me plummet to a mangled death. The irised gravity field took hold of me and I descended gently, stepping out into an area decorated with large planetary scenes. The street outside was wide, with miles-tall buildings all around me, the sky a narrow blue river directly above. The driver was my next encounter with the future. There had been nothing but autocabs here last time, so was a need for drivers a step back? He wore a skin-tight blue bodysuit, his skin scaly and his eyes those of a snake. He grinned at me, exposing a viper’s fangs. “Where to?”
“The Auton,” Bob replied.
The aircab was decidedly retro—looked like a groundcar from centuries before I was born and even had wheels. As he took us into the air, whisking me through canyons of buildings, the driver tried some conversational gambits that left me confused. I had no idea what a “hooper match” or a “gabbleduck” might be, let alone “Jain tech” or “haiman” and yet felt further confusion at a sense of familiarity with such terms. I wondered when this feeling would go, for I had felt this déjà vu a few times now. However, I certainly understood what a Dyson Sphere was and knew, despite Bob’s talk of flatlines, that I was probably due for some shocks. The driver subsided in obvious frustration. I later learned that people drove cabs for social interaction and interest, rather than financial gain. I probably wasn’t his best fare that day.
London had changed: I recognized some buildings, but they were dwarfed by new structures that must have been close to two miles high. I spotted Elizabeth Tower and Westminster in a semicircle of parkland by the river. But there was no sign of the shimmershields, the “soft” force-fields that had protected these buildings from the depredations of tourism in my time. I subsequently learned that every part of them had been nano-coated with chain glass, so tourists had been allowed back. Finally the cab brought me down onto a high airpark platform extending, amidst many of the same, on a stalk from the side of a building resembling a mile-high scalpel blade. From there a dropshaft conveyed me into the plush interior of a lounge-bar.
A wide panoramic window ran along one side, facing a long bar, behind which stood a silver-skinned humanoid who might have been Golem or human. Mockwood lattices separated seating areas around the walls, while in the middle rested comfortable sofas and low tables. The place was crowded with both human forms and figures that weren’t so familiar.
“Your room is 1034,” said Bob. “If you have any enquiries, just ask, or you can use the console there. It will take me three seconds to respond from now on because I’m off to deal with some other matters.”
“What other matters?” I asked, suspecting that Bob had already guessed my intention to make use of the bar.
“Personal,” the submind replied briefly.
“Okay—you said
everything
is paid for?”
“Yes, until you find your feet. We done for now?”
“We’re done.”
I walked over to the bar and as I passed one of the low sofas a black-haired woman stood up. I glanced at her curiously, noting her pointy ears, sharp teeth and feline shape to her face. She was wearing very little: a skin-hugging lizardskin top that might as well have been sprayed on and khaki knee-shorts of a loose meta-material. This shifted transparent diamond-shaped areas over its surface, and the ensemble was coupled with slightly antediluvian red high-heeled shoes. I later learned her kind were called catadapts and as such, she had only altered herself so far—she hadn’t, for example, opted for body hair. Everything she had done to herself emphasized her sexuality. I found her appearance grabbing at my gut and my groin and just wasn’t ready for the intensity of the effect. She glanced at me and smiled knowingly. I nodded an acknowledgement and continued to the bar, blushing like a teenager. That the feeling of déjà vu was kicking in strongly didn’t ameliorate my embarrassment.
“I’ll have a large brandy,” I said to the silver-skinned humanoid, expecting him to ask me what kind. Instead he turned back to the long rack, selecting a bottle of Hennessy and poured me a healthy measure into a cognac balloon. He held it in his hand for a moment then placed it on the bar, the glass warmed. Noting his lack of obvious augmentation, I guessed that he must be a Golem. And presumably one who had downloaded data on me. Second thoughts then occurred, because it had been a hundred years and I just didn’t know enough.
“Thanks.” I breathed in the fumes then sipped—the taste and sensation more intense than I remembered. I took another sip, contemplating the effect of the catadapt woman, then wondered about the body I now occupied. Like many soldiers during the war, I’d made many alterations to how I functioned. I’d numbed my ability to feel pain, sped up my reaction times and strength and altered my tolerance to certain performance-enhancing compounds, though I’d drawn the line at physical augmentation, or boosting. Also, because it wasn’t that helpful during combat or bio-espionage operations, I’d tuned down my libido. Did this body have a suite of nano-machines or whatever other methods of adjustment they used now? Almost certainly, but they must be back at their base setting. I heaved myself up onto a stool.
“I have a question,” I asked to my bracelet. After a short delay Bob was back: “What?”
“Does this body contain a nanosuite?”
“Yes, though somewhat more advanced than you were used to.”
“Where can I get it returned?”
“Things have changed in that respect—Duckam has something for you.”
A moment later the silver barman was back in front of me.
“Duckam?”
He dipped his head in acknowledgement and placed a transparent bracelet on the bar before me. The thing was paper thin and about an inch wide. I picked it up and studied it closely.
“What is this?”
“A nascuff,” Duckam replied, then shot away again to serve someone at the other end of the bar.
Miniature controls were visible all the way around it, and when I hovered a finger over one it expanded to displace the others. Testing each control in turn, I found all the functional adjustments to the nanosuite I had known, along with a few others that left me puzzled. I put it on my right wrist, whereupon it closed up, seemingly bonding to my skin, and turned red. I quickly found the control, with sliding scales governing all aspects of the human sex drive, and stared at them.
“Now that would be a shame,” purred a voice at my shoulder.
I turned to watch her as she slid onto a stool beside me. Duckam was there opposite her in an instant, placing some green concoction in a tall glass before her. She sipped, licked her lips, rattled little jewelled claws on the bar. Déjà vu returned hard, reflecting encounters like this seemingly to infinity. I shook my head to try and dispel it, focusing on her.
“You’re just out of Krong Tower?” she queried.
“I am,” I replied, “and finding my responses a little unnerving with my nanosuite at its base setting.”
“Best place for it to be,” she replied, holding up a wrist enclosed with another nascuff. Its colour was red too.
Glancing at other patrons of the bar I asked, “What does blue mean?”
“It means boring.” She downed her drink. “I take it you have a room here?”
“Shouldn’t we at least have a short period of ‘getting to know you’?” It annoyed me that my voice was unsteady and that it seemed incendiaries were going off in my body. My instinct was to force utter self-control because deep inside I felt an urgency I could not define and knew there was something I had to do …
“We could,” the catadapt replied. “You could talk about a war that ended twenty years before I was born and I could talk about runcible culture, lost art and the Klein patterns of Tirple Glasser.”
The war
, I thought,
something about the war …
I had to let it go. My mind wasn’t working properly and I was without vital information.
“I was always
fascinated
by Tirple Glasser,” I said, and drained my glass. The war could wait. It had, after all, waited a hundred years.
She slid off her stool. “And I always found the war
so
interesting.”
I pushed through the door into room 1034 with her tongue in my mouth and one of her legs wrapped round me. By the time I’d located the bed she’d kicked off her shoes and had both her legs round me. I staggered over and dropped her on the bed and began pulling off my clothes. Her clothing was much easier. A touch at her waist, and her top sucked into a nodule there, which she detached and tossed on the floor. Her breasts relaxed and shifted invitingly. Another touch and her shorts rolled up into a tube around her waist which she also whipped away and tossed on the floor. She flung herself back and began wriggling against the bed, rubbing her fingers between her legs, licking her lips like a porn star. My inner sophisticate and cynic stifled a bark of laughter, but the rest of me wasn’t paying attention.
“I have to get my apology in now,” I said tightly.
She grinned at me, exposing long canines, rolled over onto her knees and stuck her arse out. I climbed on the bed behind, knocked her knees out wider apart to bring her down to the right level, grabbed her hips and pulled her onto me while shoving as deep inside as I could get. I guess she had time to emit a couple of porn star moans but not much more than that.
Her name was Sheil Glasser—daughter of the famous Tirple Glasser I’d never heard of. We talked for a bit and had another drink from the autobar in my room. I then tuned some things down on my nascuff and the ensuing hour was very enjoyable, though tempered by that urgency deep within me, still undefined, and some guilt on her part. I found out why a little later: she was one of five women who had learned through the AI net of my resurrection and had competed to be the first to nail me. So this was how some entertained themselves in peacetime human society. She just got lucky by putting herself in the right hotel. I should have realized she knew more about me than she should have when she mentioned the war. I didn’t mind. Hell, why should I? She screwed without guilt thereafter and suggested inviting her friends over. I drew the line there, because despite other adjustments to my cuff I was getting tired—perhaps some after-effect of resurrection—and anyway, I was kind of old-fashioned about stuff like that. She kissed me on the forehead at some point while I was dozing—an act I found curiously disturbing.
I woke to daylight and was briefly reminded of my preresurrection interlude in the virtual hospital. Then I sat upright, wondering what time of the day it might be. After getting off the bed I eyed the wrinkled and stained sheets with something approaching shame, then bundled them up and tossed them on the floor. Silly really, since they would probably be dealt with by a robot. While I showered, things began to slot into place in my mind and I really started to think beyond the immediate. And that undefined urgency I had felt had gained a name.
“You there, Bob?” I asked my com bracelet.
“Always,” he replied after a short delay.
I moved to sit at the room console, the mirror above it immediately switching to screen mode, with holographic controls springing into being on the surface below. I paused then, not sure how to pursue my enquiries, but decided to be direct.
“What do you know about an AI called Penny Royal?”
The moment I said the words, my encounter with Sheil Glasser slid somewhere into the back of my mind. A footnote, a brief sojourn of no consequence. My past loomed around me, ready to sweep recent pleasures aside and determine my future. A longer delay ensued before Bob replied succinctly, “A search should give you everything permissible. I suggest you get up to date.”
Did Bob know my history, and had he guessed my intentions? I wanted to ask more, but decided I really needed more data before I set out on my course. It was one that seemed almost inevitable—a quest for vengeance. I needed to work out not just how to kill a rogue AI, but one that had long been on a Polity blacklist. I sat back, hand straying to the holographic controls then dropping away again. Further memories nagged at me now with hints of horror. And I knew, deep in my gut, that facing them was going to be no easy task …
THE WAR: PANARCHIA
I woke in complete darkness, suspended upside down, my body feeling as if it had been fed through a rolling mill. My mouth was dry but the stuff that came out of my suit spigot tasted of piss. My face was sore and painful, probably from a flash-burn my visor hadn’t been enough to prevent. I didn’t want to move, because I knew I must be feeling just the edge of my true injuries. That I was alive at all—after standing on the edge of a multiple CTD strike in the megaton range—stretched credibility.
I realized I was swaying and that I could hear sounds of movement, even though all my suit electronics appeared burned out. What had happened? Well, a Polity destroyer had come in and bombed Berners’ division to oblivion … I had to leave that one alone—could make no sense of it. The blast wave and firestorm had picked me up and now I was … hanging upside down. Maybe I’d been thrown into a tree? No, because there weren’t any trees here on Panarchia. Well, at least not in our region.